Norman Lewis (author)

Norman Lewis (28 June 1908–22 July 2003) was a prolific British writer best known for his travel writing. Though not widely known, "Norman Lewis is one of the best writers, not of any particular decade, but of our century", according to Graham Greene.

Biography

Lewis was born in Forty Hill, Enfield, Middlesex, a suburb of London, and attended Enfield Grammar School.

Lewis served in World War II and wrote an account of his experiences during the Allied occupation of Italy, titled Naples '44. Shortly after the war he produced volumes about Burma, titled Golden Earth, and French Indochina, titled A Dragon Apparent. His intrepid boots-on-the-ground view of Vietnam under French colonial domination, without being itself a political rant, gives context to any discussion of the American experience in that battered and subjugated part of the world.

Lewis was fascinated by cultures which were little touched by the modern world. This was reflected in his books on travels in Indonesia, An Empire of the East, and among the tribal peoples of India, A Goddess in the Stones.

Lewis's first wife, Ernestina, was a Swiss-SicilianJulian Evans The Guardian, 23 July 2003. Retrieved on 28 July 2008. aristocrat, and Sicilian life, including the Mafia, was another of his major themes, reflected in The Honoured Society and In Sicily. His treatment of the Mafia was not sensationalist but based on an acute understanding of Sicilian...
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