author
Robert Keable
1887–1927
A British priest-turned-novelist, he became famous almost overnight when his wartime novel Simon Called Peter stirred outrage and sold widely in the 1920s. His short life carried him from missionary work in Zanzibar and military chaplaincy in World War I to literary scandal and final years in Tahiti.
3 Audiobooks
Peradventure; or, The Silence of God
by Robert Keable
Simon Called Peter
by Robert Keable
About the author
Born in England on 6 March 1887, Robert Keable studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and was ordained in the Church of England. Early in his career he worked as a missionary in Zanzibar, an experience that shaped both his religious outlook and his later writing.
During the First World War, he served as a chaplain to British troops in France. The war changed him deeply, and after returning he left the priesthood. He soon turned to fiction and in 1921 published Simon Called Peter, a novel about a priest's affair with a nurse during wartime. The book caused a scandal but also became a major bestseller, making him one of the most talked-about writers of the moment.
Keable went on writing novels and travel-based works, often drawing on his own restless life and sharp interest in belief, morality, and human weakness. He spent his last years in Tahiti, where he died on 22 December 1927, still remembered chiefly for the novel that made his name and shocked so many of his contemporaries.