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Norman Lewis
(John Frederick) Norman Lewis (28 June 1908 – 22 July 2003) was an influential British journalist and a prolific author. Best known for his travel writing, he also wrote twelve novels and several volumes of autobiography.
Subjects he explored in his travel writing include life in Naples during the Allied liberation of Italy (Naples '44); Vietnam and French colonial Indochina (A Dragon Apparent); Indonesia (An Empire of the East); Burma (Golden Earth); tribal peoples of India (A Goddess in the Stones); Sicily and the Mafia (The Honoured Society and In Sicily); and the destruction caused by Christian missionaries in Latin America and elsewhere (The Missionaries).
His newspaper article entitled "Genocide in Brazil" (1969) prompted the creation of Survival International—an organisation dedicated to the protection of indigenous peoples around the world.
Graham Greene described Lewis as "one of the best writers, not of any particular decade, but of our century".
Lewis came from a Welsh family and in later life identified - at least partially - as Welsh, but he was born at Clifton, Carterhatch Lane, Enfield, Middlesex, a suburb of London, to pharmacist Richard George Lewis (d. 1936) and his wife Louise Charlotte (née Evans; d. 1950). His parents became spiritualists after the deaths of Lewis's elder brothers, and hoped young Lewis would grow up to become a medium. A clever child, Lewis was bullied by other children, and sent by his parents to live for a couple of years with three deeply religious "half-mad aunts" in Wales. Having been educated atEnfield Grammar School, as a young man, Lewis tried a variety of ways to make a living in the Great Depression of the 1930s, including self-employed wedding photographer, auctioneer, umbrella wholesaler and briefly a motorcycle racer atHarringay Stadium and White City.[2] At this time of his life, he was a "young rake and dandy" with a "love of fast cars and adventure". For some years during this period, he set up home in Woodberry Down near Manor House in London.
Lewis's different books give varying accounts of his British Army service in World War II. Jackdaw Cake says he served in the Intelligence Corps in Algiers, Tunisia and Naples in 1942-44; another says he was eventually commissioned as a second lieutenant and served with the 1st King's Dragoon Guards, an armoured regiment in the Italian Campaign. His account of experiences during the Allied occupation of Italy, Naples '44 (1978) was called by The Telegraph "one of the great first-hand accounts of the Second World War."Shortly after the war he wrote books about Burma, Golden Earth (1952), and French Indochina, A Dragon Apparent (1951), which The Telegraph similarly praised as " the finest record of Indo-China before the devastation wrought by the Vietnam War".
Another major concern of Lewis's was the impact of missionary activity on tribal societies in Latin America and elsewhere. He was hostile to the activities of missionaries, especially American evangelicals. This is covered in his book The Missionaries, and several shorter pieces. He frequently said that he regarded his life's major achievement as the worldwide reaction to writing on tribal societies in South America. In 1968, his article "Genocide in Brazil", published in the Sunday Times after a journey to Brazil with the war photographer Don McCullin, created such an outcry that it led to the creation of the organisation Survival International, dedicated to the protection of first peoples around the world. Lewis later said of this article that it was "the most worthwhile of all my endeavours".
Lewis was fascinated by cultures which were little touched by the modern world. This was reflected in his books on travels inIndonesia, An Empire of the East, and among the tribal peoples of India, A Goddess in the Stones.
Lewis wrote several volumes of autobiography, again concerned primarily with his observations of the many places in which he lived at various times, including St Catherine's Island in South Wales near Tenby, the Bloomsbury district of London during World War II, Nicaragua, a Spanish fishing village (Voices of the Old Sea),[2] and a village near Rome.
Lewis also wrote twelve novels. Some of these enjoyed significant success at the time of publication, but his literary reputation rests mainly on his travel writing. According to Graham Greene, Lewis was "one of the best writers, not of any particular decade, but of our century."
Novels
Samara (Cape 1949)
Within the Labyrinth (Cape 1950; US: 1986 Carroll)
A Single Pilgrim (Cape 1953; US: 1953 Rinehart)
The Day of the Fox (Cape 1955; US: 1955 Rinehart)
The Volcanoes Above Us (Cape 1957; US: 1957 Pantheon, not dated)
Darkness Visible (Cape 1960; US: 1960 Pantheon)
The Tenth Year of the Ship (Collins 1962; US: 1962 Harcourt)
A Small War Made to Order (Collins 1966; US: 1966 Brace)
Every Man's Brother (Heinemann 1967; US: 1968 Morrow)
Flight from a Dark Equator (Collins 1972; US: 1972 Putnam)
The Sicilian Specialist (Random 1974; UK: 1975 Collins)
The German Company (Collins 1979)
The Cuban Passage (Collins 1982; US: 1982 Pantheon)
A Suitable Case for Corruption (Hamilton 1984; US: 1984 Pantheon, as The Man in the Middle)
The March of the Long Shadows (Secker 1987)
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