So Disdained
First edition
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| Author | Nevil Shute |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Thriller novel |
| Publisher | Cassell |
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Publication date
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1928 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
So Disdained is the second published novel by British author, Nevil Shute (N.S. Norway). It was first published in 1928 by Cassell & Co., reissued in 1951 by William Heinemann, and issued in paperback by Pan Books in 1966. In the United States it is known as The Mysterious Aviator, and was first published by Houghton Mifflin in Boston in 1928.
When the book was written, Germany was disarmed under the Versailles Treaty, Hitler was still a marginal figure in the politics of the Weimar Republic and, as the book makes clear, the major political and military threat was perceived to be from the Soviet Union, then in the first flush of success of the October Revolution.
The book describes a state of cold war between Britain and the Soviet Union, though the term did not yet exist. Many elements which later became familiar in the background of 1950s and 1960s thrillers — an accelerated arms race, the development of secret weapons, intensive espionage and counter-espionage around these weapons projects, political and social subversion, and the tendency to promote right-wing dictatorships as allies against Communism — are already present in this book, three decades earlier. (This might have prompted the decision to republish it in 1951.)
Specifically, the book was written in the direct aftermath of the 1926 General Strike which seemed to put the spectre of a Socialist Revolution — highly unwelcome to people of Shute's persuasion — on the British agenda.
Peter L. Moran, the narrator, is agent to Lord Arner. Driving home after a dinner in Winchester, he picks up Maurice Lenden, who in 1917 had been a fellow pilot in the Royal Flying Corps.
The story tells how Lenden had been flying a photographic espionage mission for the Russians, how he came to be doing that, and discusses the morality of acting as a traitor to his country.
As in Marazan, Shute expresses respect for the Italian Fascist movement of the time.
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Wikipedia