Random Harvest
First edition
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| Author | James Hilton |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | War novel |
| Publisher | Macmillan |
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Publication date
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December 1941 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| ISBN | |
Random Harvest is a novel written by James Hilton, first published in 1941. Like previous Hilton works, including Lost Horizon and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, the novel was immensely popular, placing second on The New York Times list of best-selling novels for the year.
The novel was successfully adapted into a film of the same name in 1942 under the direction of Mervyn LeRoy. Claudine West, George Froeschel and Arthur Wimperis adapted the novel for the screen, and received an Academy Award nomination for their work. Though the film departs from the novel's narrative in several significant ways, the novel's surprise ending, cleverly built on inferences drawn by the reader, would not work in a purely visual medium.
The novel is divided, not into chapters, but four large parts.
It is set in the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the Second World War. It is told in the first person of Harrison, and by means of two extended external analepses tells the story of Charles Rainier, a wealthy businessman and politician, from the time he was invalided out of the army during World War I, his subsequent memory loss and partial recovery, his assuming control of the family business to his attempts to recover his memory just as Hitler invades Poland.
The book is prefaced with this quote: '..German Official Report: "According to a British Official report, bombs fell at Random"'. The novel starts in 1937, and is narrated by Charles Rainier's secretary, Mr. Harrison. Charles and Mrs. Rainier ("Helen" in the novel) reside at Stourton, their country manor west of London, where she is the perfect hostess, and a young man named Woburn has been hired to catalogue the family library. One night Rainier recounts his story to Harrison, from the time he woke up in Liverpool in 1919, having lost two years of his life.
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Wikipedia