On the Beach.

SHUTE, Nevil.

Item Number: 127533

London: Heinemann, 1957.

First edition of this classic novel, basis for the 1959 film directed by Stanley Kramer, starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Anthony Perkins. Octavo, original cloth. Signed by the author on the title page, using his full name, “Nevil Shute Norway.” Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Jacket art by John Rowland. Uncommon signed.

Historian David McCullough, writing for The New York Times, called On the Beach "the most haunting evocation we have of a world dying of radiation after an atomic war." The San Francisco Chronicle called it "the most shocking fiction I have read in years. What is shocking about it is both the idea and the sheer imaginative brilliance with which Mr. Shute brings it off." Daily Telegraph called it "Shute's most considerable achievement", and The Times stated that it is "the most evocative novel on the aftermath of a nuclear war." Anatomy of Wonder (1995) 3-161. Brians, Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, 1895-1984, p. 304. Clarke, Tale of the Future (1978), p. 111. Survey of Science Fiction Literature IV, pp. 1603-07.