Something To Answer For: Winner Of The Booker Prize 1969

Description

It was 1956 and he was in Port Said. About these two facts Townrow was reasonably certain. He had been summoned there, to Egypt, by the widow of his deceased friend, Elie Khoury. Having been found dead in the street, she is convinced he was murdered, but nobody seems to agree with her. What of Leah Strauss, the mistress? And of the invading British paratroops? Only an Englishman, surely, would take for granted that the British would have behaved themselves. In this weirdly disorientating world, Townrow is forced towards a re-examination of the basic rules by which he has been living his life; and into a realization that he too may have something to answer for.

About the Author

Percy Howard Newby CBE (25 June 1918 – 6 September 1997) was an English novelist and broadcasting administrator. He was the first winner of the Booker Prize, his novel Something to Answer For having received the inaugural award in 1969.Early lifeP.H. Newby, known as Howard Newby, was born in Crowborough, Sussex on 25 June 1918 and was educated at Hanley Castle Grammar School in Worcestershire, and St Paul's College of Education in Cheltenham. In October 1939 he was sent to France to serve in World War II as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps. His unit was one of the last to be evacuated. Afterwards he was sent to the Middle East and served in the Egyptian desert.CareerNewby was released from military service in December 1942, and then taught English Literature at King Fouad University in Cairo until 1946.From 1949 to 1978 he was employed by the BBC, beginning as a radio producer and going on to become successively Controller of the Third Programme and Radio Three, Director of Programmes (Radio), and finally Managing Director, BBC Radio.His first novel, A Journey into the Interior, was published in 1946. He then returned to England to write. In the same year he was given an Atlantic Award in literature, and two years thence he received the Somerset Maugham Prize.He was awarded a CBE for his work as Managing Director of BBC Radio.Author, friend and colleague Anthony Thwaite in his obituary states: "P. H. Newby was one of the best English novelists of the second half of the century."