Norman Lewis (author)

Norman Lewis (28 June 1908 – 22 July 2003) was an influential British journalist and a prolific author. Best known for his travel writing, he also wrote twelve novels and several volumes of autobiography.

Subjects he explored in his travel writing include life in Naples during the Allied liberation of Italy (Naples '44); Vietnam and French colonial Indochina (A Dragon Apparent); Indonesia (An Empire of the East); tribal peoples of India (A Goddess in the Stones); Sicily and the Mafia (The Honoured Society and In Sicily); and the destruction caused by Christian missionaries in Latin America and elsewhere (The Missionaries).

A newspaper article entitled "Genocide in Brazil" (1968) prompted the creation of Survival International—an organisation dedicated to the protection of indigenous peoples around the world.

Graham Greene considered Lewis one of the best writers of the twentieth century.

Early life

Lewis was born in Forty Hill, Enfield, Middlesex, a suburb of London, and attended Enfield Grammar School. His parents were spiritualists and hoped young Lewis would grow up to become a medium; his father worked as a pharmacist. As a young man, Lewis tried a variety of ways to make a living in the Great Depression of the 1930s, including self-employed wedding photographer, auctioneer, umbrella wholesaler and motorcycle racer.