Something to Answer For

P.H. Newby’s 17th novel made literary history in 1969 when it was named the inaugural winner of the Booker Prize. "Beautifully written, shot through with crisp, mordant wit, and Newby plays out his narrative with consummate skill" (Sam Jordison, The Guardian).It was 1956 and he was in Port Said.About these two facts, he was reasonably certain but a murderous attack left him certain about little else - maybe just the conviction that the British usually did the right thing and that to be a crook a man must assume the society he lived in was honest."Newby deserved, and deserves more attention. Graham Greene called him “a fine writer who has never had the full recognition that he deserves,” and that’s as true now as it was in Newby’s lifetime... Something to Answer For is set in the Egypt of 1956, during the Suez Crisis, and it boasts a wonderful sense of place." - Paris ReviewP.H. Newby was a novelist and BBC mandarin who in 1969 became the first winner of the Booker Prize, for Something to Answer For Newby was the author of some 23 novels as well as several works of biography and Egyptian history. The majority of his writing career, including as fiction reviewer for The Listener, ran in tandem to his roles at the BBC, where he eventually rose to become Controller of Radio 3 and then managing director of BBC Radio. P.H. Newby's seventeenth novel Something To Answer For was assured of a place in literary history when it won the inaugural Booker Prize in 1969. It was 1956 and Townrow was in Port Said - of these two facts he is reasonably certain. He had been summoned by the widow of his deceased friend Elie Khoury. She is convinced Elie was murdered, but nobody seems to agree with her. What of Leah Strauss, the mistress? And of the invading British paratroops? Only an Englishman, surely, would take for granted that the British would have behaved themselves. In this disorientating world Townrow must reassess the rules by which he has been living his life - to wonder whether he, too, may have something to answer for? 'Beautifully written, shot through with crisp, mordant wit, and Newby plays out his narrative with consummate skill.' Sam Jordison, Guardian Winner of the 1969 Booker Prize