Nevil Shute: On the beach

Review of Nevil Shute’s On the beach

This books’ story takes place in Southern Australia. It tells us about our earth after a nuclear war. A war that lasted for a few weeks only, but destroyed or will destroy all mankind. The whole Northern Hemisphere is dead, the only human beings still alive are the Australians.

But their ‘happiness’ will only last for a few months - it’s the wind that spreads the radioactivity towards them. And everybody knows that the radioactivity will cause radiation sickness, which will kill the little rest of the human race within a few days.

Peter Holmes is on the lucky side, too. He works for the Australian Navy and lives together with his wife Mary and his very young daughter. One day, he is asked to go on a cruise with an American Submarine with the other main character, John Osborne. The goal of the cruise is to watch out if there is still anybody alive in the Northern Hemisphere or - not. And it is the bitter truth: They even find cities with no damage at all - but radiation sickness has killed everything.

‘On the beach’ tells little stories about the young lady Moira Davidson who drinks a lot to stand what happens; about John Osborne, who starts practising in really dangerous car racing and about Peters wife Mary, who just doesn’t want to believe what happens and tries to live like she used to do before.


Nevil Shute made me think about life and its end again. What’s the sense of our life? To play ‘the game’? To start an own business, to succeed in making money? Nobody can give a general answer, valid for everyone.

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