Book review: A Quiet Evening by Norman Lewis

Desmond Clifford

It is a great mystery that Norman Lewis is seemingly not considered among the great names of literature in English. He wrote 15 novels in similar territory to Graham Greene and is at least as good as him; even Greene thought so. The novels are out of print.

He was better known as a travel writer and some of the 20 or so books he wrote remain in print. “Naples 44”, his first-hand account (he was a British Intelligence Officer) of Allied control of the city newly evacuated by the Nazis is one of the great books of World War 2.

No one better explains the basis of Mafia power. Mussolini, as well as making the trains run on time, practically eradicated the Mafia by swopping one form of organised crime for another. The Allied authorities handed control to gangster Vito Genovese and his men to fill the power vacuum. They’ve filled it ever since.

Equalising eye

It’s not as though Norman Lewis was a flash in the pan. He died in 2003, aged 95 and published until the year of his death. He was born to Welsh parents in Enfield, London but after a few years was sent to his family in Carmarthen, “it was my grandfather’s ambition to make a Welshman of me.”

Young Norman was called “Dickie Dwl” at school because he couldn’t speak Welsh, as he describes in Jackdaw Cake (1985), the first volume of his memoir. He describes a chaotic Carmarthen family life with his grandfather, a tea merchant, and his mad aunties, with detachment and dry humour.

Eventually, he returned to his parents in Enfield, who by now had become Spiritualists following the death of two sons. They hoped Lewis would become a medium but he rejected religion, cultivating a sceptical, equalising eye which served him well as a writer. Lewis wrote at least twenty travel books including memoirs which are themselves travelogues. “A Quiet Evening” is an anthology of some of his best work.

Lewis travelled compulsively and constantly. He spent summers in Ibiza before Spain’s tourist industry began: the island ravers know nothing of the ancient fishing villages now vanished in favour of Russian yachts. He travelled through Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam before turmoil fully engulfed the region.

Building on his wartime experience, he maintained a lifelong expertise in the Italian Mafia, coming to believe his Sicilian father-in-law may have been a member. He was largely uninterested in developed societies but was drawn to places where the modern world had made little impact: South America, Burma, Indonesia, North Africa and the Gulf.

Deadpan humour

A Quiet Evening has some 500 pages. I thought I might read the first 50 pages and then some selected pieces to give me a good flavour. In fact, once I’d read the first pages I was gripped and read right through. I read a lot of Lewis years ago but had forgotten just how good a writer he is.

Lewis was a modest man and a happy one, with nothing of the tortured artist about him. He seems to have done little to cultivate profile outside of the newspapers and magazines which published him. The ability to pass unnoticed helped him as a writer but may not have helped promote his work.

Although he writes on serious and, sometimes, extreme subjects there is a deadpan humour at work. He opens an essay, “On the whole, Liberia has had a poorish press”. In Naples, he quotes the mayor on illegal cigarette smuggling, “I refuse to admit that this is a crime… for me it is an illegal solution.”

Spain has attracted a substantial literature in English. No one conveys better the stark and conflicting transition from dictatorship to democracy, the gloom of Franco’s world giving way to unrestricted, unattractive grossness. He describes bull fighting without partisanship as a spectacle in decline as the public turns towards football.

Ultra-intrepid

He travelled widely across 1960s and 70s South America recording the awful cruelties towards native Indian populations who were crushed, murdered and enslaved in the interests of commerce, evangelical missions and the CIA.

A generation ago it was easier for shady corporations and governments to act maliciously and cover their tracks. Only the ultra-intrepid could face the many discomforts and dangers, including the real risk of murder. Norman Lewis was foremost in that company, often accompanied by his friend, photographer Don McCullin.

His regarded his essay “Genocide”, as his most important piece of journalism. It describes the murderous plight of Brazilian Indian communities being savaged by the very body established to protect them – The Indian Protection Service. At 12,000 words, it was the longest article ever published by The Sunday Times. Those were the days.

He covered the epic California grape pickers strike which began in 1965 and was in its fifth year when Lewis arrived. This piece is almost unreadably tragic, yet Lewis uses scarcely an adjective and no emotional flourishes. Observation speaks for itself.

The Mexican strike-breakers were in a constantly passive state of compliance despite their daily exploitation and the fact they were being poisoned by pesticides. When Lewis’ article appeared in The Sunday Times, it drew an angry three-page letter from Ronald Reagan, then governor of California and now regarded by some as one of America’s great presidents.

Fragility and ubiquity 

British Honduras, now Belize, made Lewis think of Cardiff. In early 1950s Rangoon, as virtually the only foreign visitor, he was aided by a friendly young official named U Thant, later one of the world’s most famous men (and inspiration for a 1980s Welsh band).

In Thailand he observes the arrival of hundreds of cinemas showing American films and laments that they killed overnight the ancient art of shadow-plays. In wartime Italy he found himself supervising, for a period, 3,000 Soviet prisoners who were returned to the Soviet Union and certain death. In Havana he was sent by Ian Fleming to interview Hemingway, “looking into his face, it was hard to believe that he would ever smile again.”

Lewis’s travels are tough. There are no poolside gin and tonics served by white coated waiters. He rarely seeks out the great or the good. His encounters are with people usually ignored, the natives, the impoverished migrants. In 1978 he was the first non-scientist to report from the Amazon on tropical deforestation.

In observing native communities, he avoids the picturesque. He records what he observes, the fragility of lives, the ubiquity of human nature for good and ill, humankind’s propensity to exploitation and evil – magnified when hidden – resilience, resignation. His work is compelling but uncomfortable. He stirs emotions through his observation, but the reader rarely feels “I’d like to go there.” On the whole, you’re glad Lewis has gone for you.

I cannot stress enough just how good this book is. Do yourself a favour.

A Quiet Evening is published by Eland and is available from all good book retailers.