Do you consider Neville Shute to be an Australian Author?

... and do you have a favourite Neville Shute novel? Debate!

An Old Captivity is my favourite by a mile with No Highway my second choice.

I still have an old paperback copy of An Old Captivity and still re-read it every so often.

The first Neville Shute novel I read was "On the Beach" which I think was still on our school reading list when I was in year 9, circa 1984. Given the Cold War was still very much a reality at that time it left a deep impression on me. We tend to forget. I've also read "A Town Like Alice" and the most bizarre, probably almost classifiable as science fiction, being "In the Wet".

The reason I posed the question was that in my grandparents generation, Neville Shute appears to have been a hugely popular author whose current reputation is a shadow of its former self.

As for whether he could be classified as an Australian author... I think no. Even after he moved to Australia and started writing Australian themed novels it was still with a very British voice, which may point to the reason for the popularity of the novels in previous times, and account for their faded status now.

Oh, and it appears I spelt his first name incorrectly... it should be Nevil, not Neville.