Round the Bend (novel) Round the Bend (novel) Round the Bend is a 1951 novel by Nevil Shute. It tells the story of Constantine "Connie" Shaklin, an aircraft engineer who founds a new religion transcending existing religions based on the merit of good work. It deals with racism, including the White Australia policy, and also with the importance of private enterprise. It was one of the first novels Shute wrote after emigrating from Britain to Australia in 1950. The novel, written in the first person, adopts the voice and eyes of Tom Cutter, an aircraft pilot, engineer, and entrepreneur. The novel starts with Cutter's
Something Like a House of village elder, Old Tao. Unable to communicate much because of the language barrier, he spends some 35 years there, undergoing, amongst other things, the Cultural Revolution and bullying by the Red Guards, in the meantime bringing up a little girl who later becomes the victim of experimental biological warfare. Something Like a House Something Like a House is the debut novel by British writer Sid Smith, first published in 2001. The novel, set in China, was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Whitbread First Novel Award. When Smith wrote the novel he had never travelled to