This powerful fiction doomsday novel is set in Australia in the aftermath of the nuclear disasters in the northern hemisphere. Someone, somewhere, started World War III. The last survivors of humanity helplessly await the atomic rain and dust headed their way. This is the poison that will wash away all traces of people and most animals from this earth. This novel portrays interesting and moving descriptions of different ways people react to the near approach of certain death. I think Shute's purpose in writing this is to make us think if anything like this is possible if a World War III was to come about. Are we getting too smart for our own good considering the fact that we could destroy our entire existence? This novel was published in 1957.
             Nevil Shute was a British-born Australian novelist and an accomplished storyteller. Shute was born In Ealing, Middlesex on January 17,1899. Shute was educated as an aeronautical engineer and he used his expertise on technical issues and knowledge of aviation in his books. Shute was educated at schools in Oxford, Shrewsbury, and Woolrich. Shute graduated from Oxford in 1922 and then joined the de Havilland Aircraft Company. He worked as an aeronautical engineer who specialized in Zeppelins. From 1950 Shute lived permanently in Australia, settling on a farm at Langwarrin, Victoria. Shute's career spanned 30 years and he published 25 books. He died on January 12, 1960, in Melbourne (1).
             On the Beach is a surreal journey into the darkness of the Nuclear Age. In the novel the feared nuclear war has eliminated all life in the northern hemisphere, leaving Australia to await the inevitable spread of radioactive contamination that will end the rest of human life on earth. I feel that the main theme of this novel is depicting the main characters in front of inevitable doom and seeing how they respond to it and spend their last months alive. Many of the char
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