The Breaking Wave by Nevil Shute

The Breaking Wave by Nevil Shute

The Breaking Wave is one of Nevil Shute's most poignant and psychologically suspenseful novels, set in the years just after World War II.

Sidelined by a wartime injury, fighter pilot Alan Duncan reluctantly returns to his parents' remote sheep station in Australia to take the place of his brother Bill, who died a hero in the war. But his homecoming is marred by the suicide of his parents' parlormaid, of whom they were very fond. Alan soon realizes that the dead young woman is not the person she pretended to be. Upon discovering that she had served in the Royal Navy and participated along with his brother in the secret build-up to the Normandy invasion, Alan sets out to piece together the tragic events and the lonely burden of guilt that unravelled one woman's life. In the process of finding the answer to the mystery, he realizes how much he had in common with this woman he never knew and how "a war can go on killing people long after it's all over."

Norway, Nevil Shute, was born in Ealing, London, in 1899. He went to Balliol College in Oxford to study Engineering Science. Pursuing his childhood dream, he worked as an aeronautical engineer on the development of airships and, later, airplanes in the budding aircraft industry. He began writing in his leisure time and published his first novel, Marazan, in 1926, under the pseudonym Nevil Shute in order to safeguard his engineering job. He married Frances Mary Heaton in 1931, and the couple had two daughters.

During WWII, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, where he worked on secret weapon development. He continued to write after the war and eventually settled in Australia, where he died in 1960. Pied Piper (1942), A Town Like Alice (1950), and On the Beach (1957) are among his best-known works.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780307474025
ISBN 10	030747402X
Title	The Breaking Wave
Author	Nevil Shute
Series	Vintage International
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2010-08-24
Number of pages	256
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.