West, Morris
Entry updated 9 December 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1916-1999) Australian author, in his early years a lay monk, and best known for such novels as The Devil's Advocate (1959). The first volume of the Vatic Trilogy, The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963), which was filmed as The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), features the election of a Russian Pope at a point when World War Three threatens to erupt; the sequence continues with further Near Future crises confronting his successors. In The Navigator (1976) a lost Island is found in the South Pacific, and a Utopian community is founded there; The Clowns of God (1981), a Near Future tale set at the end of the twentieth century, deals with a Pope convinced that the Second Coming is nigh (see Messiahs; Religion), and whose apocalyptic announcement of his vision of the risen Christ leads to his forced abdication. Eminence (1998) revisits some of the concerns of the earlier trilogy. [JC]
Morris Langlo West
born St Kilda, Victoria: 26 April 1916
died Clareville, New South Wales: 9 October 1999
works(selected)
series
The Vatic Trilogy
- The Shoes of the Fisherman (Sydney, New South Wales: William Morrow, 1963) [Vatic Trilogy: hb/]
- The Clowns of God (Sydney, New South Wales: Hodder and Stoughton, 1981) [Vatic Trilogy: hb/]
- Lazarus (Sydney, New South Wales: Heinemann, 1990) [Vatic Trilogy: hb/]
individual titles
- The Navigator (Sydney, New South Wales: Collins, 1976) [hb/]
- Eminence (Sydney, New South Wales: HarperCollins, 1998) [hb/]
links
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