Round the Bend

By Nevil Shute

When Tom Cutter hires Constantine Shaklin as an engineer in his international air freight business, he little realizes the extraordinary gifts of his new recruit. Shaklin soon proves to possess a charismatic power that inspires everyone he meets to a new faith and hope for humanity. As Cutter’s business expands across the Middle East and Asia, so does Shaklin’s fame, unifying people from a wide array of cultures and religions with his unusual blend of the practical and the spiritual.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 7, 2010
• ISBN: 9780307474162

Reviews for Round the Bend

[jenneb_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I can't remember who recommended this to me but it's a great read! The copy I got didn't have a cover, so I had no idea what it was going to be about when I picked it up, and I think that's a good way to read it.

Very broadly, it's about an English guy who starts up an air charter company in Bahrein in the late 40s, but that's also not what it's really about.

I think that at the time it was actually trying to be racially progressive, but nowadays it reads as Orientalist and colonialist and so on, which is sometimes a little hard to take. Still, the bones of the story are really enjoyable--up to you how much of that you can stand.

[judithproctor · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Thanks to Coth for giving me my copy."Round the Bend" is a curious book in many ways. To me, it actually has a flavour of science fiction. It's writing about a world very different to mine - the world of my parents.Technology is very different. Aviation is still taking off. It takes a couple of weeks to travel half-way round the world in a small plane. The world is still a large place and people have very little knowledge of what life is like in other countries.Racial prejudice is a basic fact of life. The idea of marrying someone of another race is inconceivable - not in the sense that it is terrible, but because you literally would never conceive of doing so. People of non-white races get lower wages as a matter of course, or may be banned totally from working in some places.Set against this background, what we actually have is a novel about people of different races and faiths working together in harmony. It's the world of aviation pilots and engineers, where the shared fascination with planes leads to respect and friendship.It's also a world (which reminded me a little of 'Stranger in a Strange Land') where one man can start a new form of religion.What I like about Shute is that he tells the story. He never rants on (and nor do his characters) about things being good or bad - they live their lives and deal with things as they are. He doesn't try to manipulate the reader.His characters are seen through the eye of the engineer.Shute isn't big on description - his characters travel over a large part of Asia, but if you're looking for, say, a detailed description of a Hindu temple, then you won't find it. His character visits a temple and is entertained by it, but that's all you learn. He saves his love for airstrips and engines. The odd thing is that the descriptions of long flights and the navigation checks, etc. don't become boring, rather, they help to set the pace of the novel.The story is told in the amount of time that is right for it. It doesn't rush through its plot in the way some more modern books do. Shute is not the man for gangland shoot-outs and madcap stunts. His tales are of more ordinary people.Sometimes, ordinary people achieve the extra-ordinary - while still remaining themselves. This is Shute's strength as a writer.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is an oddity: I've read it two or three times, and I can never quite make my mind up whether I like it or not. Most of the novel is a very straightforward tale told by a very straightforward young man of how he became an aircraft ground engineer and then a pilot, and set up a successful airfreight business operating out of the Persian Gulf in the 1940s. There's a lot of stuff about types of aircraft and cargoes, the financing of small businesses, demurrage (now there's a word you don't find in many novels...), spare parts, general overhauls, airworthiness certificates, hire purchase, and so forth. Slipped in between all that, and gradually taking over as the main thread of the novel, is the rather strange story of another ground engineer, the narrator's friend and employee, who becomes a celebrated religious teacher, drawing together Hindus, Buddhists and Moslems in a rather conveniently Samuel Smiles, Victorian-capitalist sort of cult in which salvation is obtained by doing a good job for one's employer. Zen and the art of aircraft maintenance. Sounds like hocum, and it is, but the conjunction of the saintly Shak Lin with the supremely materialist Tom, with the use of Tom's first person narrative, does allow the author to do some interesting things. How would an ordinary, modern Englishman set about writing a gospel?At the more mundane level, the early chapters of the book are interesting for their first-hand description of life with Sir Alan Cobham's flying circus in the early thirties, which Shute knew well. On the opening page of the book, the narrator makes a passing reference to one of Cobham's planes being "a new type of aircraft, the Airspeed Ferry" - but doesn't mention that the author in his day job had been managing director of Airspeed at the time and had designed that plane for Cobham!

[f2langman · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Tale of a man who starts an air charter service in the East after the war.His best friend has a spiritual attitude to the work and inspires all those around him regardless of their denominations. A great read and one of Nevil Shutes best novels.

[johnnyd48-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my all-time favorite books. A first person narrator tells the story of his life in aviation and the strange turns that it has taken, the strange and wonderful places it has taken him and the interesting and amazing people he has met, worked and lived with. Step by step, a very mundane story told by a very normal, down-to-earth man moves from day-to-day decisions to world changing events.

[aliciamalia · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Like his other novels, this is very interesting, epic in scope, and a pleasure to read. It deals with airplanes, life, love, and religion--you could say that it's got it all. I prefer A Town Like Alice, but this is a close second.

[sonora.anne · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I think this is Nevil Shute's greatest work (and so did he, I've read). In addition to being a well-told, intriguing story about people, airplanes, and exotic locales, it give the reader an inkling of how a person like Jesus might have become deified by his own contemporary followers (whether he was God or not).