Round the Bend

by Nevil Shute

Tom Cutter is in love with airplanes and has been from his boyhood. He can remain in England, an employee in another man's aviation business, or he can set out on his own.

With little more than personal grit and an antique aircraft, Cutter organizes an independent flying service on the Persian Gulf. He sees opportunities everywhere, also dangers.

"In Cutter's growth from provincial conservative to worldly entrepreneur, Shute brings us a fine portrayal of a man willing to accept pain and danger in his search for personal growth." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)

This is an alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780099530152

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Adventure, Classics, Religion, Middle East, Literature

375 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Nevil Shute Norway was a popular British novelist and a successful aeronautical engineer.

He used Nevil Shute as his pen name, and his full name in his engineering career, in order to protect his engineering career from any potential negative publicity in connection with his novels.

He lived in Australia for the ten years before his death.

Reviews

[Chrisl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Using multiple rereads as criteria for favorite novelists, Nevil Shute is easily my most liked.
Set in the years after WWII, written then, it provides useful perspective on the Middle East.
***
5/3/17 - Here's a quote I like : "By John Anderson

"Perhaps my favourite of all Shute's novels, "Round the Bend" contains many of his usual elements - aviation, enterprise, a mild love interest, and an unusual story very well told.

Tom Cutter got into aviation the hard way before World War II, working his way up first in an Air Circus that toured England in the summer season, then with Airservice where he became a competent ground engineer, servicing planes all over the Middle East during the War. With the suicide of his wife just before his return to England, he cannot face going back to work at the aerodrome where they met, and he buys an old Fox Moth aircraft to charter out in Bahrein. The enterprise is highly successful and his business develops so that he has to take on other pilots and engineers. To keep his costs down he employs only Asiatics - Sikh pilots and local engineers. The rapidly developing oil industry uses his charter service to link operations between the Persian Gulf, Indonesia and Australia. There, by accident, he meets his old friend Connie Shaklin - a first class aircraft engineer, half European, half Asian, who joins his operation as Chief engineer,

Connie's method of teaching aircraft maintenance combines the practical and spiritual - right thinking and good work are inseparable. An ascetic and modest man, Connie is soon established as a religious teacher in Bahrein gaining the respect of the local Imams and Sheik. The book unfolds the story of the spread of this teaching throughout the Middle and Far East among ground engineers and religious leaders. This spread parallels the development of Tom's aviation business eastward from Bahrein to Australia.

Shute handles the interwoven themes in masterly fashion - pioneering flying across India, Burma and Indonesia, Tom's tolerance of Connie's religious teaching and the attention it brings, the hostile reaction of Colonial authorities and Tom's ultimate support for his friend, and his love for Connie's sister Nadezna.

In writing this book, Shute must surely have drawn on his experiences during his flight in a light aircraft to Australia in 1948. The descriptions are evocative, the characters believable and there is much emotion as the story unfolds. Mature Nevil Shute at his very best.
Copyright MMI - MMXVII Nevil Shute Foundation"

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Should have listened to my friend, Anne, and passed on this one. I had already picked it up on a kindle sale and thought a little Nevil Shute might be a good thing right now. Too bad, this was a boring read and I dnf'd at 110 pages. Very much a description of planes, flying in the East, religions, and little else. There was never any sign of the development of a real plot that meant anything to me as a reader, and the writing is a very stilted first person, so that I never cared a whit for Tom Cutter, our main character.

The overall rating on this book is 4.5 stars, so not everyone feels as I do about it, but unless you have a real interest in flying machines (which Shute knows loads about) you would do well to skip this one.

[Roz Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's something about Nevil Shute's prose that is quite beguiling. It's not poetic or florid; more it's a quality of the way he scrutinises the emotions of his characters. His narration is cool, but much lies under the surface. The usual mood is reserve, endurance. But under that quiet exterior there is turbulence indeed.

The narrator of Round The Bend is Alan Cutter, an aircraft engineer, pilot and entrepreneur who starts an air freight business in Bahrain. The story is the account of his friendship with Connie Shaklin, an engineer who founds a new religion.

This is the second novel of Shute's that I've read. The first was the most famous; On The Beach. As with On The Beach, Round the Bend begins slowly and in an unassuming way. But this quality of observation is just acute and intelligent enough to keep you reading. And then something happens that strikes a lightning bolt through the life of the narrator.

Shute reminds me of another of my favourite novelists, Andrew Miller. They share the same quality of tenderising you. Their characters' interior landscapes draw you into a place of sensitivity. Shute's characteristic flavour is emotional burdens such as guilt or yearning, and especially missed opportunities. This book's plot is quiet, but you are still gripped by a sense of increasing pressure. Despite its title it is not meandering.

One of the triumphs of this book, for me, is the setting. It has great charm. The Bahrain airstrip is a stripped-down place of sand, hangars and engines. The main characters hop between the continents, delivering goods, setting up more export bases, leaving behind personnel who spread Shaklin's infleunce. Shute would never be so clumsy as to make the comparison with angels, these people who spend so much time in the sky in their machines, but you are drawn to entertain yourself with the idea. A charming, haunting story.

[Chrissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a novel very hard for me to review. I knew I liked it a lot, but I have had a hard time figuring out why. What I have come to is this:

The story is about a man who builds up a business from scratch. He likes what he is doing. He likes the independence of being his own boss. It is hard work, but at the same time creative, exhilarating and just plain fun. I like his attitude. He admits his mistakes, and then actively makes an effort to not repeat them. I like what the book says about the value of different cultures and at the same time acknowledges how difficult it is to view the world from a perspective foreign to one’s own. The mixing of different cultures is both rewarding and difficult.

The book advocates private enterprise. It speaks out against racism. It says that the particular religion an individual chooses is less important than that one has a religion or simply a belief system that guides one toward honorable behavior. To be kind, considerate and hard working are attributes promoted by most religions. They are the staple ingredients of a good way of life. The book brandishes these as praiseworthy ideals.

The book plays out in the Middle and Far East, although Southampton, England, is the central protagonist’s home. Timewise, it is after the Second World War. Life in Bali, Bahrain, Burma and other far distant lands is drawn. The wide variety of traditions, vegetation and landscapes described enrich the reading experience. The reader also becomes acquainted with a variety of aviation models.

Just as there is usually a focus upon aviation and engineering in Shute’s novels, the importance of family and love are woven into his tales too. How Shute weaves the love threads into this tale is somewhat different. Although Shute wrote many books, they are not repeats of each other.

John Telfer narrates the audiobook very well--all the way through, from start to finish, it is simple to follow. A good solid performance is what we are given. Four stars for the narration.

This story kept me thinking about the feasibility of their existing such a person as Constantine Shaklin, a very close friend of the central protagonist. Understanding this friend and their relationship is what the story is about. Who of the two friends has gone “round the bend”?

*****************

*A Town Like Alice 4 stars
*The Chequer Board 4 stars
*No Highway 4 stars
*The Far Country 4 stars
*Landfall 4 stars
*Most Secret 4 stars
*Beyond The Black Stump 4 stars
*Round the Bend 4 stars
*Slide Rule: The Autobiography of an Engineer 3 stars
*Marazan 3 stars
*Pied Piper 3 stars
*Ruined City 3 stars
*Trustee from the Toolroom 3 stars
*The Rainbow and the Rose 3 stars
*An Old Captivity 2 stars
*Requiem for a Wren 2 stars
*So Distained 2 stars
*Pastoral 1 star

*Lonely Road TBR
*What Happened to the Corbetts maybe
*On the Beach maybe
*In the Wet maybe

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I confess I don't know how Nevil Shute does it. This novel, written about 1951, purports to be the autobiography of an airline entrepreneur after WWII. He starts in England with a single small plane and gradually builds an airfreight empire centered in Bahrain. He has no interests other than his business, and he achieves success by pluck, unremitting hard work, sinking every penny back into the business, and hiring the best people as mechanics, engineers, and pilots, even if they aren't white Europeans. His narrative is plain, spare, un-ironic, and toneless. First this happened, then this. It sails very close to boring. His philosophy seems to be "Forget prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude; the real virtues are competence, practicality, honesty, and once somebody has demonstrated those, open-mindedness towards his possibly strange and foreign way of life." The real subject of the story emerges only very slowly and with increasing fascination--it is that his oldest friend and chief engineer seems to be some kind of religious nut who has gone "round the bend." He preaches a kind of mindful work ethic to his co-workers. "Good work and right thinking are as one." Do your job carefully and with respect. Done that way, it will be God's work. His presence and charisma are apparently irresistible. Slowly he begins to attract followers and his reputation grows. He attracts Muslims in the Mideast, Hindus in India, and Buddhists in the far East. The narrator (his friend and boss) is only slightly aware of all this, but he is happy to let it go on--he has a supremely expert workforce and marvelously well-maintained planes as a result. What's not to like? But gradually political and other tensions grow. Finally his friend is diagnosed with leukemia and dies the calm death of a holy man, worshiped by many thousands. Gradually the book has completely shifted from its apparent subject. The narrator can't quite believe in his friend's holiness, but even he in his skepticism has been moved. Near the end he admits with typical simplicity, "I don't think about things in quite the way I used to." And neither does the reader.

[Tatiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished rereading this one, and it's my favorite Shute novel and one of my favorite books of all time, notwithstanding the sexism of the era and the rather quaint and patronizing view taken of "Asiatics". For the time it was entirely enlightened.

Nevil Shute was a great writer and a wonderful person. Aviation in his time did for those few people who pursued it what the internet does in ours for everyone: makes the world into our own small neighborhood. Connie is one of my favorite characters in all of literature. Though we only hear a bit of his philosophy, it's enough to see the outlines of his path, a form of devotion applicable to Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, or whatever religion one follows, and brought to bear upon the whole of one's life. To be a very good aircraft mechanic one must become a very good person. As an engineer, designer, builder, and mom, I do aspire to be a Shaklinist.

[Charlotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so totally lovely. I didn't even know it was actually a book about religion, or really, about God more than religion, thank goodness, because otherwise I probably wouldn't have thought I'd like it much. But I did. There's something I love about the just post-war novelists--this style was a bit similar to Jessica Mitford or Somerset Maugham, not in any tonal way, but in the sort of clipped dialog, and passages of very matter of fact description, and some of the lovely British slang of that period. In addition to being completely ahead of his time in matters of religious understanding, tolerance of the Other, and male-female relationships, Nevil Shute is such a good storyteller. Maybe the start of a Shute kick.

[Oliver Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoughtful, charming book.
Video review here: https://youtu.be/2pXoH12fMrE

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all, I'd like to say that, had it been available to me to give this novel a 65-70% rating, rather than having to decide between 60 and 80% then that's what I would have done. It's a bold book - all the bolder given its historical context - and in common with all Shute's work its examination of how human beings can live decently, faced with extraordinary circumstances, is thought-provoking and involving. It tells a good story too. Its weakness really lies with a naivety, or overoptimism, about some aspects of human behaviour which, sadly, seem irreducible, regardless of one's good intentions. Let me explain...

This is a tale told by an Englishman of humble origins who, at the tail-end of the British Empire, anticipates the economic rise of the new world of oil wealth in the Gulf and builds a successful business servicing its need for air transport. But it is more especially his account of the growing fame and influence of one of his friends and employees, a Eurasian mechanic who introduces a philosophical, religious approach to the work of aero engineering, and in doing so gains a following as a religious teacher among his fellow engineers - Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, and Buddhist - wherever the air transport company operates.

The barriers and prejudices the two encounter from the old order are intertwined. Our narrator, Tom Cutter, has to cope with his culture-bound English parents' casual racism in referring to all non-Europeans as 'wogs', although he himself apostrophises the same people - Arabs, Indians, Pakistanis, Burmese, Thais, Vietnamese, Indonesians - all as 'Asiatics', and is very candid that he prefers to employ them because they will accept low pay. There is one particularly shocking episode in which one of his planes is prevented from unloading in 'white' Australia because it is piloted by an Indian, a boycott led by trade unions and supported by the government. Institutional racism, condescension and paternalism are the norm: Cutter has to go cap in hand to an aircraft company to buy one of their planes, despite clearly being able to pay for it; the 'British Resident' in Bahrain censures him for accepting a business loan offered by a wealthy local Sheikh; the preacher Connie Shaklin is all but deported by the same panjandrum because of his closeness to the local people and their religion.

Shute saw and challenged the absurdities and injustices of these aspects of his 'own' world, and by extension the inevitability of change, including that effected by armed anticolonial actions taking place at the time, the late 1940s: Cutter first employs Shaklin when his previous boss, an American running guns to Vietnamese and Indonesian rebels, is imprisoned. He also understood the importance of religious faith as a focus for collective identity and personal conduct in many places throughout Asia, although it's here I fear he was overoptimistic in describing a wholly positive response to attempts to 'modernise' people's application of that faith to everyday life. Even in the 1940s, I have grave doubts that a non-Muslim outsider, preaching unconventional applications of the Qur'an to a deeply conservative people, would have gained the approval and collaboration of imams, local leaders, or even those people themselves in the open-minded way that Connie manages.

As a novel, this is a fine and interesting book, an insight into a vanished world which only half a century ago was a live one for many of its author's fellow Englishmen seeking to maintain their own moral, social, and ethnic assumptions in an environment very different from that in which they had grown up. It's a generous and, as I have said, optimistic book, and it tries hard to establish common ground between disparate peoples through the shared central tenets of their indigenous religions, in order to suggest the possibility of a better, less divided world. It is interesting that Tom Cutter, who has evinced throughout absolutely no interest in his own nominal Christianity is, by the end, speaking of Connie in explicitly Christian terms.

Sadly, however, I think Nevil Shute allowed his own decency and desire for better things to come to occlude the evidence of much religion as a deliberate tool of division, politically and parochially manipulated, and preferred by many practitioners as a mark of exclusivity rather than its opposite. 'Twas ever thus, and a great shame. But as a study of what might have been hoped for, in the comparatively recent past, this novel is very much worth the read, and Nevil Shute's reputation as a chronicler of a humane, idealistic British attitude to a changing world deserving of preservation.

[Lewis Woolston · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is by my count the 5th Nevil Shute book i've read and they have all been wonderful, not one of them has been less than a four star read. It's a crying shame he is not more widely read.
I finished reading this on Christmas Eve and that kind of feels appropriate, this feels like a Christmas book in the same way Bridge on the River Kwai is a Christmas movie in my mind (mostly because the crappy TV station we had when i was a kid used to repeat at Christmas every year and now it's stuck in my mind as a Christmas movie)
The story tells of one Tom Cutter who has a passion for aircraft. He builds himself a charter plane business in the Persian Gulf in the years after the Second World War. One of his ground crew is an engineer called Connie Shak Lin. Connie has some odd ideas about work and prayer being the same thing if done right and that work can lead a man closer to God.
He starts spreading these ideas. Something like a cult develops.
This is by far one of the best books i've read in a while. Everyone should be reading Nevil Shute, we need a Nevil Shute revival.

[ErnstG · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite books. Every time I read it I get something more from it. A little dated in its social attitudes, although those are interesting as well. This book (like A Town like Alice) comes from Shute's flight to Australia after WW2, and the people and places he came across.

The problem with Nevil Shute is that he writes so well and therefore you read so effortlessly that you think this is just a story. It actually is a vehicle for exploring some thoughts on religion, seen through the eyes of a doubting Thomas -- a working class Englishman who sets up an air freight company in Asia without white expats. And a sidebar sad love story too.

Shute wasn't under many illusions about his own writing, but thought this was the one book that might be read in 50 years. It has been suggested that it was his vehicle for stating his own views on religion, and I think there is something to that statement. Connie's teachings agrees with statements made approvingly in other books e.g. the importance of honesty and diligence in technical matters, and we know from his life that he recognised religion to be an important ingredient in a working society. Was this the engineer's religious manifesto?

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite Shute book. A no-nonsense engineer grapples with the disturbing possibility that his best airplane mechanic may in fact be an incarnation of the Messiah. Imagine Richard Bach’s “Illusions,” except not written by a drugged-up hippie. Now visualize “Atlas Shrugged," except not written by a fascist propagandist. Mix non-violently and you have this weird, compelling, unique fable about a man trying to reconcile Modernism with Mysticism, finding spiritual value in technical precision, and grudgingly opening up to the possibility of the divine.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am confused by this book. I plan to read Nevil Shute's autobiography next because I love several of his other books but I feel like I'm missing something here. As it is now, I find the Global Sect of the Airplane Mechanics implausible. But there's nothing impossible in the story and in some ways it's close to some real ones like the Bab's. The philosophy is sort of like the Tao or anything about Mastery. I just never got a feeling of what the Teacher was inspiring at a personal level in his followers. His disciples seem the same before and after except that they become more devout with respect to their old local religion. I think it might be that I'm having trouble putting myself in the place of people living without electricity, TV, or Internet, but working on vehicles that fly around in the heavens.
In any case, the book works well as a subtle political pamphlet for its time. It's for world unity of ordinary people and against racism, war, etc. As a novel, it has no real plot but is still readable and that's impressive.
Very good job by the narrator of the audiobook.

[Celia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Round the Bend is another way to say insane or crazy.

Tom Cutter narrates this story. Tom is a self-made man who starts up an airline charter business in Bahrain. His chief engineer is Connie Shak Lin, who is a good engineer, a good person AND very religious. Connie develops a following in Bahrain. Some people think he is divine; others just think he is 'round the bend'.

This is the first book I have read by Shute. I thought it very powerful, well written and contained well-developed characters. Not that I agree with each one of them. But I can see that each character's beliefs are logical (for them) and the actions and thoughts of each are consistent with the character.

5 stars

[John R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nevil Shute is a great writer and much more subtle and seductive than might be expected. A plain-spoken man tells his life story which includes the story of his dealings with a life-long friend and a transcendent spiritual experience is the result. No one who has ever read the book on the basis of my recommendation has ever expressed disappointment.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great story by Nevil Shute although with some hints on racism.

5* A Town Like Alice
2* On the Beach
4* Pied Piper
4* Landfall
4.5* Most secret
4* Marazan
3* Requiem for a Wren
4* No Highway
4* The Chequer Board
4* Beyond the Black Stump
4* The Far Country
4* Lonely Road
3* Trustee from the Toolroom
3* An old captivity
3.5* Ordeal
4* Round the bend
TR Pastoral
TR So disdained
TR The Rainbow and the Rose
TR Ruined City

[Cally · Rating 5 out of 5]

nevil shutes best novel. stunning. made me cry, laugh and think.

about finding god and faith in the small and the ordinary and i think sometimes there's nothing better than that.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mystical and magnificent - this book was real surprise to me. Post WW2, Shute is asking himself the fundamental questions of man's existence, through what starts off as an adventure story based on the life of a young Briton obsessed with aircraft. The other main character is a charismatic young man - half Russian and half Chinese - who is a skilled aircraft engineer. Shute and the characters he creates embark on what effectively becomes a search for religious enlightenment. One of them finds his God.......in aircraft workshops. It might seem a sort of Zen and the Art of Aircraft Maintenance, but it's not as weird as it sounds. It's moving, thought-provoking and a worthwhile read.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shute picks apart the story of Tom Cutter and Connie Shaklin and Nadezna with infinite delicacy, his hand hidden in Cutter's unstyled memoir narration. While straightforward, it is a thing filled with a mechanic's technical mind and business minutia. Cutter's is a worm's eye view as he stands somewhat apart of Connie's ministry and is mired in his business and personal problems. But his actions--his concentration on doing right, his simple human decency--mirror Connie's approach, and the vectors of their lives are ultimately very similar.

The factual details are quite astonishing, from the maintenance schedules of the various airplanes to intricacies of Islamic law and Islamic business culture.

[David Dennington · Rating 4 out of 5]

More flying around the world in this book. This time, it’s around the Persian Gulf, Siam, India and Burma. It relates the buildup of a business started by a young Englishman in the Gulf region back in the early days of airfreight. The narration regarding aviation is realistic as always.

The main character, Tom Cutter, grows up in England with a young man of mixed origins and one who has unique spiritual qualities and insights. This develops as the story moves along, with Cutter through thoughtlessness, seeming to cause the death of his own unfaithful wife. His friend, through his homespun teaching, attracts a following across the Middle East and the Asian Pacific and is thought to be some kind of prophet.

The flying aspects narrated in the story are interesting and one has to wonder if some of it came from events Shute witnessed and characters he knew. A map showing the air routes Tom Cutter’s freight operations took would be interesting to see.

Once again, Shute’s interest in spirituality is evident and one wonders what he would have thought of the goings on today.

[Hugh Lambert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read every book by Mr. Shute and the screenplay I am aware of, and he remains my favorite author. I think this book is his best, and it remains my favorite book I have ever read.
Perhaps what I like best is that is seems the last kind of book a post-Victorian English Man would have written, especially one born into the “upper middle class”. He treats the "non-Europeans" like people, and not "wogs". He shows disdain for Europeans who do treat people like "wogs". As a wog myself I appreciate this especially. As an “Air Force brat” the aviation aspects were a great read. All the religions mentioned were handled rather more even-handedly than I would have expected. None were denigrated. The Arabs were not demonized, there were no jingoistic references and the only people dealt with critically were members of the diplomatic core who behaved in a stupid fashion.
The story has inspired me to live my life better. It (the story) calls attention to injustice in many forms (especially racism and religious intolerance) and shows that people of good intention can affect solutions to common problems. I related to both one character’s love of flying and the other’s “collecting religions” as a way to better understand how different people see the world.
I like this book so much it has become the only book I give as a gift on a regular basis. I find it to be thought-provoking and hopeful. It explains why his work remains popular to this day.

[Yvor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nevil Shute is one of my favorite authors. Round the Bend is an adventure/romance novel set in the first half of the 20th Century. It explores the themes of friendship, the early days of civil aviation, discrimination & prejudice, and how humanity might respond to a new Prophet or Manifestation were he to appear in the middle of the 20th century. My personal preference is the unabridged audiobook version. But Nevil Shute is not a difficult author to read and I am sure my friends would enjoy this book.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

G:\mainline fic

Narrated by Christopher Hurt
Unabridged, 9 audio cassettes

Shute believed Round The Bend to be his finest novel.

From wiki: The book explores themes that would later be reflected in Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Richard Bach's Illusions (1977). It deals with racism, including the White Australia policy, and also with the importance of private enterprise. It was one of the first novels Shute wrote after emigrating from Britain to Australia in 1950.

[Vikas Datta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating... the best rationale of religion as a reason for diligence and pride in one's work, and above all, the tale of a messianic figure who really inspires but never gets swept away by the adulation he commands. But the narrator is no less a hero, for his diligence and openness, which is remarkable for the time he is in... A grand narrative of the changing postwar world and one of the best works of this master story-teller...

[Kelly_Hunsaker_reads ... · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Shute's beautiful book A Town Like Alice in 2018 and quickly fell in love. And although this book is wonderful, I didn't love it quite as much as the first. But Shute's prose is cool, simple and spare. He exposes his characters in a way that is quiet, subtle and slightly voyeuristic. I came away from both books feeling like I knew the people on their pages.

Round the Bend was written in 1951. It is the fictional autobiography of an airline entrepreneur named Tom Cutter. Tom begins his business in England when he purchases one small plane. He soon moves to Bahrain (then an English protectorate) where he builds an airfreight empire. Tom Cutter's life revolves around his business. He seems to do nothing else. He has no lover, no friends, no hobbies. He puts all of his money into the business and hires all the best people. Many of his pilots and crew chiefs are not white Europeans, and because of that the book is richer. It allows us to see glimpses of life for people of different races and religions in the same time, place and business. He has no interests other than his business, and he achieves success by pluck, unremitting hard work, sinking every penny back into the business, and hiring the best people as mechanics, engineers, and pilots, even if they aren't white Europeans.

Tom's friend and chief engineer is the quirkiest character in the book, and perhaps the true subject of the book. He is the impetus for the title of the book. He has gone "round the bend," and is in some sort of religious fervor. He is preachy and judgmental of his co-workers, and yet he is charismatic and interesting, which draws people to him. In the Mideast he attracts Muslims, in India he brings in Hindus, and Buddhists come to him in the far East. He seems a bit like a cult leader.

Tom is either barely aware or doesn't care. His focus is single-minded. He cares only about his aircraft. Unfortunately though, his friend is diagnosed with leukemia and dies. And this is when Tom seems to connect with the way his friend is viewed. A holy man, revered by a huge number of people. Tom is surprised, maybe even shocked, despite the fact that his friend has been gathering followers for quite some time.

Tom's naive surprise is the best part of the book for this reader because it demonstrates the change in his thinking. And by the end of the book the reader has also been transported to a place different than she was before beginning the book. Both reader and narrator are changed. That is the power of books.

[James Hartley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shute is a great writer in the sense that his books and characters are alive: there is real talent at work here and you can't not appreciate the skill involved in the craft.
This one is about a post-second world war young man who builds up a career flying charter planes in the Middle East and South East Asia. An old school friend shows up in his life and this friend begins to be seen as a religious leader where the main character works.
It's interesting enough, if, as many commentators here have said, there is a tendency for the reader to start skipping in the second half of the book, trying to follow the (interesting) religious leader narrative and dodge the ins and outs of the main character's business (not so interesting). I found the love story alternately shallow and obvious, but there's a sense throughout this book that Shute is making points about racism and humanity and the love interest aspect, particularly, plays a subservient role to the 'message' (to the detriment of the book as a whole).
Having said all that, I enjoyed it a lot, especially the window into post-war British attitudes - exemplified in the main character's parents.

[Patrick Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoy Shute books and this one was no exception. Still very readable with unexpected circumstances and places that westerners have not heard anything kind about for 45 years.

Shute takes us to places we’ve forgotten or ignored or learned to have religious intolerance for and tells us what they were like. And perhaps some still are.

Because it’s written about an era over 70 years ago things have changed in some ways. Wars have been fought and ended. Colonialism by the Dutch and English is replaced by American colonialism which is more insipid, less blunt, less honest with itself.

What kind of money people could live on. What lives of working people were like are captured in time.

Through the book religious tolerance is a theme. Or is it just that all religions share certain ideals that can be adapted to guide daily life by people gifted enough to learn about how they work while those who have the gift of that understanding remain honest enough to respect a religion, without ever claiming to be one of its leaders or followers?

Hope you enjoy the read.

[Ellis Knox · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is not my favorite Shute book, but it is every bit as fascinating as his other publications. In each story, I find myself impressed by the story-telling. Lots of other reviews use words like spare and plain to describe is prose style, and I suppose that's true enough, but the cumulative effect of those ordinary words is almost unfailingly extraordinary.

I agree with another review who said that the narration borders on the boring. That hardly sounds like a recommendation, does it? But the cumulative effect is that one wonders where the story is headed. What will happen with these characters? How will these difficulties play out? No ticking clocks, no car chases, no blood, and yet there is suspense and tension and conflict.

Reading a Shute novel has been a pleasure, every time. I look forward to the next one.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

An aircraft engineer inadvertently starts a cult that spreads across the Eastern world, with believers travelling thousands of miles to hear him speak of God and engine maintenance.

Is Connie, born of a Russian mother and Chinese father and always interested in religion, really round the bend? Is he the prophet who will save the world? Or is he just a good man and efficient engineer?

Like most of Nevil Shute's ideas, it's simple, yet wacky, and he narrates the story in a way that keeps you reading even though its progress is gentle and undramatic.

[Lois Barnard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first novel I've read by Nevil Shute and I loved it. At first it felt like I was reading an autobiography because of the way it was written and the reality of it all.
The overall message of the book was impacting and memorable, namely whatever you do in life do it as ethically as you can.
The character in the book, helped many others to follow this mantra despite their different religious beliefs.
Overall - a challenging experience.