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Summary
Author Notes
Morris West was born in 1916 in St Kilda, Melbourne. At the age of thirteen, he left home to study with the Christian Brothers Order in Sydney, but left in 1939 after 12 years, before taking his final vows. He was fluent in Italian and French, and taught modern languages and mathematics in New South Wales and Tasmania in his twenties. He spent four years code-breaking as a cipher officer in the AIF, and then for a decade he concentrated on producing and writing radio plays.
West's first novel was published in 1945 and he began writing full time in the 1950s. He went to Italy were he went undercover with Father Mario Borelli, who was working with street urchins, and wrote The Children of the Sun, published in 1957. In 1959, following six months as Vatican correspondent for The Daily Mail, he published The Devil's Advocate, which won the William Heinemann Award of the Royal Society, the National Brotherhood Award of the National Council of Christians and Jews as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Award. Shoes of a Fisherman, the first of The Papal Series, which included The Clowns of God, Lazarus and Eminence, won the Best-Sellers Paperback of the Year Award in 1965.
West helped to found the Australian Society of Authors, was chairman of the National Book Council, chairman of the National Library of Australia and a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. He was made member of the order of Australia (MBE) in 1985 and officer of the order of Australia (AO) in 1997. Apart from writing novels, West also wrote screenplays, radio dramas, plays and was also an artist. Translated into twenty-seven languages, his works have sold more that sixty million copies. He also wrote an account on his spiritual journey, A View From the Ridge, published at the end of 1996.
Morris West died while working at his desk on 9th October 1999.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
West can be a grand storyteller, but here he's mostly a grim preacher, sacrificing all craftsmanship and all believability of character or plot in order to pursue a theme beyond his grasp. That theme is no less than the world's tyranny and violence--specifically the plight of political prisoners--and the unbelievable character crusading against it is ""Big John"" Spada, an Anthony-Quinnish, self-made millionaire who secretly funds and directs an underground group called Proteus. ""I'm going to fight the evil, whatever face it wears,"" proclaims Big John, so Proteus' international web of agents does anything and everything to promote democracy, free political prisoners, and combat tyrants. The current crisis: Argentina's fascist government has arrested Spada's daughter and son-in-law (a freethinking Argentine publisher). Daughter Teresa is soon released, having been raped and tortured, but son-in-law Rodo must be rescued from an isolated garrison--a venture which requires Big John to kill Europe's top hired assassin. Rodo is saved (though his torture has left him impotent), but more dirty doings lurk: the enemies of Proteus are trying to kill Big John (letter bombs, a fire that wipes out his whole family), and there's a traitor within the organization. Utterly fed up, Big John finally gets really tough and announces to the UN--in ""the speech of the century""--that if all political prisoners aren't released, he'll spread plague germs throughout the world. Corny characters and dialogue that might otherwise be appealing (like Big John's loyal Gal Friday who calls him ""Chief"") are just silly in the Big-Theme context; and Big John's increasing violence-against-violence is no substitute for genuine plot structure. Well-intentioned, perhaps, but ultimately just another comic-book melodrama that trivializes every issue it touches. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.