Nevil Shute · 1951 · global
Nevil Shute's 1951 novel, and his own favourite. Tom Cutter builds up a small air charter business in the Persian Gulf, and hires an engineer he knew as a boy - Connie Shak Lin, of mixed Asian parentage, who maintains aircraft as an act of worship. Across the East, ground crews begin to gather wherever he works, and Cutter watches a religion start.
- 1Bahrain
Tom Cutter sets up a charter airline on the Gulf with one aircraft and a great deal of nerve, flying oil men, pilgrims and freight around a coast where the money is arriving faster than anyone can spend it.
- 2Karachi
The business grows east through Karachi, and Cutter sends for the engineer he worked with as a boy - Connie Shak Lin, who turns out to hold that maintaining an aircraft properly is a religious duty, and says so to the ground crews.
- 3Rangoon
By Rangoon the thing has taken hold: mechanics come from three countries to work under Connie for nothing, the aircraft are the best maintained in Asia, and Cutter finds himself running an airline and a movement at the same time.
- 4Bali
On Bali, worn out and ill, Connie goes on teaching to the end - and Cutter is left to work out what he has been part of, and what to do with a hangar full of men who now believe their work is a form of prayer.