Following some old recommendations in this forum, I read “On the beach”, by Neville Shute, some months ago. I enjoyed every page of the book, no matter the author gives little margin to anticipate the logical ending. As a nice surprise, I’ve found that the plain and direct language used by Shute, makes this book and easy reading for any non-native English speakers. So, my usual visits to the English-Spanish dictionary were reduced to the minimum. In fact, I’m sure that this same direct language is one of the powerful points of the Shute’s work.
Once finished the book, I watched an Australian miniseries about it. (
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0219224/)
I think it’s a good, decent work, with the usual (though not needed) changes to make the characters more “TV-friendly”. Anyway, the story and the most important and shocking scenes remain nearly untouched.