The Chequer Board
  • Published: 15 October 2009
  • ISBN: 9780099530022
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $27.99

The Chequer Board

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Jul 2010
Paperback
15 Oct 2009
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A novel about four different men learning how to live with their past lives, and face their futures.

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.
  • Published: 15 October 2009
  • ISBN: 9780099530022
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $27.99
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About the author

Nevil Shute

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).

Also by Nevil Shute

A Town Like Alice
Requiem for a Wren
On The Beach
Pied Piper
Beyond the Black Stump
Trustee from the Toolroom
Ruined City
See all

Praise for The Chequer Board

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
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