A Town Like Alice A Town Like Alice A Town Like Alice (United States title: "The Legacy") is a romance novel by Nevil Shute, published in 1950 when Shute had newly settled in Australia. Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman, becomes romantically interested in a fellow prisoner of World War II in Malaya, and after liberation emigrates to Australia to be with him, where she attempts, by investing her substantial financial inheritance, to generate economic prosperity in a small outback community — to turn it into "a town like Alice" i.e. Alice Springs. The story falls broadly into three parts. In Post-World War II London,
A Town Like Alice The novel was adapted to film in 1956 as "A Town Like Alice". It starred Virginia McKenna and Peter Finch, directed by Jack Lee. This film was known as "Rape of Malaya" in U.S. cinemas, and by various other titles in non-English-speaking countries. It was shown in Japan under the title "Malay Death March: A Town Like Alice"（"Maree shi no koshin: Arisu no yo na machi"「マレー死の行進:アリスのような町」）. In 1981 it was adapted into a popular television miniseries called "A Town Like Alice", starring Helen Morse and Bryan Brown (with Gordon Jackson as Noel Strachan). It was broadcast internationally, in the United