Description

Published 1956: Hardcover / Very Good Condition /

Original blue cloth with red block titles on the spine and original pictorial dust jacket. 278 very clean and bright slightly age-toned pages, previous owners dedication on the first free page. Slight shelf wear on dust jacket consistent with age. (RB228)

Postage €6.95 including any additional books ordered.
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John Turner, a young man with a chequered past, has been told he has just one year to live. He decides to use his time in search of three very different men he met briefly during the war: an snobbish British pilot, a young corporal accused of murder, and a black G.I. accused of attempted rape. Along the way, Turner learns about forgiveness, tolerance and second chances, and overcomes his fear of death.

Review
Not only a brilliantly fluent storyteller but also an ironic commentator on the world scene, Harpers & Queen

Shute was a brilliant storyteller and a terrific example for any writer -- Gerald Seymour, Daily Express

As a novelist, Nevil Shute goes from strength to strength, experimenting, drawing out life as he sees it, and setting it before us in ordered pattern...The Chequer Board is a notable novel, Punch

Blessed with an unaffected poplar touch, Shute has come close to the sentiment of his readers not only through a very genuine quality of sympathy but also through a singular ease and liveliness of topical invention...he is a storyteller of an uncommonly veracious stamp, whose performance is more remarkable that his quiet and refreshing modest airs might suggest, Times Literary Supplement

A happy knack endows this story with a character who is slightly greater than life-size. It proves once again how the ordinary, the average, the season-ticket holder sitting next to you, can still, in the hands of an expert, furnish the very stuff of literature -- John Pudney, Daily Express

About the Author

Nevil Shute was born on 17 January 1899 in Ealing, London. After attending the Dragon School and Shrewsbury School, he studied Engineering Science at Balliol College, Oxford. He worked as an aeronautical engineer and published his first novel, Marazan, in 1926. In 1931 he married Frances Mary Heaton and they went on to have two daughters. During the Second World War he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve where he worked on developing secret weapons. After the war he continued to write and settled in Australia where he lived until his death on 12 January 1960. His most celebrated novels include Pied Piper (1942), No Highway (1948), A Town Like Alice (1950) and On the Beach (1957).

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chequer-Board-Vintage-Classics/dp/