The Penguin Podcast is back! Listen Now
The Secret People

The Secret People

Summary


FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1935, THE SECRET PEOPLE WAS JOHN WYNDHAM'S FIRST NOVEL

'The Sun Bird was beginning to travel fast, close to the edge of the whirlpool. They could look right down into the hollow of spinning water'

While flying over Africa's New Sea, a water project in the heart of the Sahara desert, Mark Sunnet's rocket plane crashes and is sucked through a hole in the desert floor into a strange, cavernous new world.

There, he and his partner Margaret encounter the survivors of an ancient race of underground dwellers whose whole existence is now threatened. Captured and forced to live with other prisoners taken from the surface, the pair know that they must escape before the waters above drown them all . . .

'Perhaps the best writer of science fiction England has ever produced' Stephen King

About the author

John Wyndham

John Wyndham was born in 1903 in the Midlands. After leaving school, he tried his hand at several careers, including farming, law and advertising, before starting to write stories in 1925. During the war he worked as a censor in the Ministry of Information and afterwards served in the Army. The Day of The Triffids was published in 1951, and was followed by many other famous works of science fiction, including The Kraken Wakes, The Chrysalids and The Midwich Cuckoos. Wyndham died in 1969.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more