The Guns of Navarone was published by Collins in 1957 and became one of the bestselling adventure novels of the twentieth century. A team of five men — led by Captain Keith Mallory, a New Zealand mountaineer, and including Andrea Stavros (a Greek resistance fighter of enormous size and strength), Corporal Dusty Miller (an American demolitions expert), and two others — must infiltrate the German-held Greek island of Navarone and destroy two massive naval guns that command the strait between Navarone and the Turkish coast. 1,200 British soldiers are trapped on the nearby island of Kheros, and no ship can reach them to evacuate them while the guns are operational.
MacLean’s plotting is exemplary: the team faces a succession of obstacles — a cliff face that must be scaled in a storm, a traitor in their midst, capture and escape, the guns themselves (hidden in a cave fortress) — and each obstacle is overcome through a combination of skill, courage, and sacrifice. The pacing never flags; the action set pieces (the cliff climb, the battle in the village, the assault on the gun emplacement) are among the most thrilling in the genre; and the characters, while not psychologically complex, are vivid and distinctive enough to sustain reader investment.
The 1961 film adaptation — directed by J. Lee Thompson, starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn — was a massive commercial success and became one of the defining World War II adventure films. The film is more optimistic than the novel: MacLean’s original is grimmer, with more casualties and a bleaker view of what the mission costs the men who survive it.
Collecting The Guns of Navarone
First edition (Collins, London, 1957): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $300–$800
- Very good: $100–$300
- Signed: $500–$1,500