Nevil Shute · 1947 · global

Nevil Shute's 1947 novel. John Turner is told he has a year to live, and decides to spend it finding out what became of three men who shared a hospital ward with him in the war - a deserter, a black American GI accused in a Cornish village, and a pilot who went missing in Burma. What he finds tells him more about his own life than theirs.

1. 1
   London

   Given a few months to live by a surgeon who is honest with him, the unremarkable Mr Turner decides against sitting at home and sets out to trace three men he shared a ward with in 1943, none of whom he has thought about since.

2. 2
   Penzance

   In west Cornwall he finds the story of a black American soldier accused of assaulting a local girl, and a village that took the man's side against his own army - a piece of unnoticed decency that Turner had assumed did not exist.

3. 3
   Rangoon

   The last of the three went missing in Burma, so Turner flies out to Rangoon on money he cannot spare, in a country newly independent and largely uninterested in an ageing Englishman asking about a wartime pilot.

4. 4
   Mandalay

   Up-country beyond Mandalay he finds the man alive, married into a Burmese village and running a school - and Turner, who came to bring news of home, understands that there is nothing here that needs rescuing.