Given the vile acts of the Japanese during the 2nd World War (and before that in their invasion of China) - and the fact that, unlike the Germans in regard to the Nazis, the Japanese still seem to be somewhat in denial over their war crimes - Shute's portrayal of them seems fair. I'm not sure that it is fair to regard Shute's works as containing instinctive racism. I think Shute was economically conservative - he was a qualified aeronautical engineer and among other things worked on the R100 privately backed airship built in competition to the government-sponsored R101 which crashed on its maiden voyage - Shute's views in his autobioraphy (Slide Rule) were highly critical of the R101 construction. Even if she does win all her wars, she suffers enough setbacks in the process to keep our sympathy, all told in Shute's crystal-clear, direct prose. Shute is not exactly a progressive writer, but Jean Paget surely counts as a feminist protagonist even though not written by a feminist author she challenges and to a certain extent gets around gender roles, particularly in the constrained social environment of 1940's Australia. Despite the instinctive racism (against Australian aborigines and Japanese, though the Malays get off rather better) and the resounding endorsement of Shute's firmly conservative values, I found Jean Paget a fascinating character - survivor and leader of a group of prisoners in Malaya during the second world war, then pursuing the man she loves and thought was dead to his home in Australia, then when she finds his home town is not the sort of place she wants to spend the rest of her life, she decides to turn it into the sort of place she wants to spend the rest of her life, basically by using her unexpectedly inherited fortune to create a local economy based on employing the local young women. NwhyteI picked this up last night and really couldn't put it down.

Author a town like alice