In his essays, criticism, screenplays, autobiography, and novels, Graham Greene explored a territory located somewhere on the border between despair and faith, treachery and love.
This cross-section of Greene's work was originally selected with the author's help in 1973 and has now been extensively revised and updated. It includes the complete novels
The Heart of the Matter and
The Third Man, along with excerpts from ten other novels; short stories; selections from Greene's memoirs and travel writings; essays on English and American literature; and public statements on issues that range from repression in the Soviet Union to torture in Northern Ireland to the paradoxical virtue of disloyalty. An extensive critical and biographical introduction, headnotes, chronology, and bibliography by editor Philip Stratford make
The Portable Graham Greene as invaluable for scholars as it is essential for any traveler through Greene's richly menacing and strangely seductive literary landscapes.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Author: Graham Greene
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 02/01/2005
Series: Viking Portable Library
Pages: 560
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 7.70h x 5.00w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9780143039181
Audience: Young Adult
About the AuthorGraham Greene (1904-1991), whose long life nearly spanned the length of the twentieth century, was one of its greatest novelists. Educated at Berkhamsted School and Balliol College, Oxford, he started his career as a sub-editor of
The Times of London. He began to attract notice as a novelist with his fourth book,
Orient Express, in 1932. In 1935, he trekked across northern Liberia, his first experience in Africa, recounted in
A Journey Without Maps (1936). He converted to Catholicism in 1926, an edifying decision, and reported on religious persecution in Mexico in 1938 in
The Lawless Roads, which served as a background for his famous
The Power and the Glory, one of several "Catholic" novels (
Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair). During the war he worked for the British secret service in Sierra Leone; afterward, he began wide-ranging travels as a journalist, which were reflected in novels such as
The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, The Comedians, Travels with My Aunt, The Honorary Consul, The Human Factor, Monsignor Quixote, and
The Captain and the Enemy. In addition to his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, two books of autobiography--
A Sort of Life and
Ways of Escape--two biographies, and four books for children. He also contributed hundreds of essays and film and book reviews to
The Spectator and other journals, many of which appear in the late collection
Reflections. Most of his novels have been filmed, including
The Third Man, which the author first wrote as a film treatment. Graham Greene was named Companion of Honour and received the Order of Merit among numerous other awards.