Robert Shaw's five novels mix unusual and adventurous plots with solid and serious themes. Though The Man in the Glass Booth (1967), which he adapted as a successful play, is his best-known novel, The Sun Doctor (1961) is perhaps richer. Asked by interviewer Terry Philpott why he wrote, Shaw said: "First, because I have a childish desire for immortality.... Secondly, I am a political writer. I feel very radically about some things but only in a certain kind of way, not in a square-on political party way. I would like to influence people to a hard and tough radicalism. That is why I admire Orwell so much.... I genuinely love to shock my readership into something. But I am always thinking of how I can get their attention, of how I can shock them out of their smug, middle-class ways. I want to shock them out of their stupor, to...