Greene, Graham

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Graham Greene

Personal

Born October 2, 1904, in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England; died of a blood disease, April 3, 1991, in Vevey, Switzerland; son of Charles Henry (a school headmaster) and Marion (Raymond) Greene; married Vivien Dayrell Browning, 1927 (deceased, 2003); children: one son, one daughter. Education: Attended Berkhamsted School; Balliol College, Oxford, B.A., 1925. Religion: Roman Catholic.

Career

Writer. Times, London, England, sub-editor, 1926-30; film critic for Night and Day c. 1930s; Spectator, London, film critic, 1935-39, literary editor, 1940-41; with British Foreign Office in Africa, 1941-44; Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd. (publishers), London, director, 1944-48; Indo-China correspondent for New Republic, 1954; Bodley Head (publishers), London, director, 1958-68. Member of Panamanian delegation to Washington for signing of Canal Treaty, 1977.

Awards, Honors

Hawthornden Prize, 1940, for The Labyrinthine Ways (published in England as The Power and the Glory); James Tait Black Memorial Prize, 1949, for The Heart of the Matter; Academy Award nomination, 1950, for The Fallen Idol; Catholic Literary Award, 1952, for The End of the Affair; Boys' Clubs of America Junior Book Award, 1955, for The Little Horse Bus; Antoinette Perry Award ("Tony Award") nomination for best play, 1957, for The Potting Shed; Pietzak Award (Poland), 1960; D.Litt., Cambridge University, 1962; Balliol College, Oxford, honorary fellow, 1963; made Companion of Honour, 1966; D.Litt., University of Edinburgh, 1967; Shakespeare Prize, 1968; named chevalier, Legion d'Honneur (France), 1969; John Dos Passos Prize, 1980; medal of the City of Madrid, 1980; Jerusalem Prize, 1981; awarded Grand Cross of the Order of Vasco Nunez de Balboa (Panama), 1983; named commander, Order of Arts and Letters (France), 1984; named to British Order of Merit, 1986; named to Order of Ruben Dario (Nicaragua), 1987; Royal Society of Literature Prize; honorary doctorate, Moscow State University, 1988.

Writings

FICTION, EXCEPT AS INDICATED

Babbling April (poems), Basil Blackwell (Oxford, England), 1925.

The Man Within, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1929.

The Name of Action, Heinemann (London, England), 1930, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1931.

Rumour at Nightfall, Heinemann (London, England), 1931, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1932.

Orient Express, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1932, published as Stamboul Train, Heinemann (London, England), 1932.

It's a Battlefield, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1934, with new introduction by Greene, Heinemann (London, England), 1970.

The Basement Room, and Other Stories, Cresset (London, England), 1935, title story revised as "The Fallen Idol" and published with The Third Man (also see below), Heinemann (London, England), 1950.

England Made Me, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1935, published as The Shipwrecked, Viking (New York, NY), 1953, published under original title with new introduction by Greene, Heinemann (London, England), 1970.

The Bear Fell Free, Grayson & Grayson (London, England), 1935.

Journey without Maps (travelogue; also see below), Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1936, 2nd edition, Viking (New York, NY), 1961.

This Gun for Hire, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1936, published as A Gun for Sale, Heinemann (London, England), 1936.

Brighton Rock, Viking (New York, NY), 1938, with new introduction by Greene, Heinemann (London, England), 1970.

The Confidential Agent (also see below), Viking (New York, NY), 1939, with new introduction by Greene, Heinemann (London, England), 1971.

Another Mexico, Viking (New York, NY), 1939, reprinted, 1982, published as The Lawless Roads, Longmans, Green (New York, NY), 1939.

The Labyrinthine Ways, Viking (New York, NY), 1940, published as The Power and the Glory, Heinemann (London, England), 1940, reprinted under British title, Viking, 1946, with new introduction by Greene, Heinemann, 1971, Viking, 1982.

British Dramatists (nonfiction), Collins (London, England), 1942, reprinted, Folcroft (Folcroft, PA), 1979.

The Ministry of Fear (also see below), Viking (New York, NY), 1943.

Nineteen Stories, Heinemann (London, England), 1947, Viking (New York, NY), 1949, published with some substitutions and additions as Twenty-one Stories, Heinemann, 1955, Viking, 1962.

The Heart of the Matter, Viking (New York, NY), 1948, with new introduction by Greene, Heinemann (London, England), 1971.

The Third Man (also see below), Viking (New York, NY), 1950, reprinted, 1983.

The Lost Childhood, and Other Essays, Eyre & Spottiswoode (London, England), 1951, Viking (New York, NY), 1952.

The End of the Affair, Viking (New York, NY), 1951.

The Living Room (two-act play; produced in London, England, 1953), Heinemann (London, England), 1953, Viking (New York, NY), 1957.

The Quiet American, Heinemann (London, England), 1955, reprinted, Viking (New York, NY), 1982.

Loser Takes All, Heinemann (London, England), 1955, Viking (New York, NY), 1957.

The Potting Shed (three-act play; produced in New York, NY, 1957; produced in London, England, 1958), Viking (New York, NY), 1957.

Our Man in Havana (also see below), Viking (New York, NY), 1958, with new introduction by Greene, Heinemann (London, England), 1970.

The Complaisant Lover (play; produced in London, England, 1959), Heinemann (London, England), 1959, Viking (New York, NY), 1961.

A Burnt-out Case, Viking (New York, NY), 1961.

In Search of a Character: Two African Journals, Bodley Head (London, England), 1961, Viking (New York, NY), 1962.

Introductions to Three Novels, Norstedt (Stockholm, Sweden), 1962.

The Destructors, and Other Stories, Eihosha Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan), 1962.

A Sense of Reality, Viking (New York, NY), 1963.

Carving a Statue (two-act play; produced in London, England, 1964; produced in New York, 1968), Bodley Head (London, England), 1964.

The Comedians, Viking (New York, NY), 1966.

(With Dorothy Craigie) Victorian Detective Fiction: A Catalogue of the Collection, Bodley Head (London, England), 1966.

May We Borrow Your Husband?, and Other Comedies of the Sexual Life, Viking (New York, NY), 1967.

(With Carol Reed) The Third Man: A Film (annotated filmscript), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1968.

Collected Essays, Viking (New York, NY), 1969.

Travels with My Aunt, Viking (New York, NY), 1969.

(Author of introduction) Al Burt and Bernard Diederich, Papa Doc, McGraw (New York, NY), 1969.

A Sort of Life (autobiography), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1971.

Graham Greene on Film: Collected Film Criticism, 1935-1940, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1972, published as The Pleasure Dome, Secker & Warburg (London, England), 1972.

The Portable Graham Greene (includes expanded text of The Heart of the Matter and The Third Man), Viking (New York, NY), 1972, updated and revised, Penguin (New York, NY), 1994.

The Honorary Consul, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1973.

Collected Stories, Viking (New York, NY), 1973.

Lord Rochester's Monkey, Being the Life of John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester, Viking (New York, NY), 1974.

The Return of A. J. Raffles (three-act comedy based on characters from E. W. Hornung's Amateur Cracksman; produced in London, England, 1975), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1976.

The Human Factor, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1978.

Dr. Fischer of Geneva; or, The Bomb Party, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1980.

Yes and No [and] For Whom the Bell Chimes (comedies; produced together in Leicester, England, 1980), Bodley Head (London, England), 1983.

Ways of Escape, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1981.

Monsignor Quixote, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1982.

J'accuse: The Dark Side of Nice, Bodley Head (London, England), 1982.

Getting to Know the General: The Story of an Involvement, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1984.

The Tenth Man, Bodley Head (London, England), 1985.

(Author of preface) Night and Day (journalism), edited by Christopher Hawtree, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1985.

Collected Short Stories, Penguin (New York, NY), 1988.

The Captain and the Enemy, Viking (New York, NY), 1988.

Yours, etc.: Letters to the Press, 1945-1989, edited by Christopher Hawtree, Reinhardt (London, England), 1989.

Reflections (essays), Viking (New York, NY), 1990.

A World of My Own: A Dream Diary, Reinhardt (London, England), 1992.

The Graham Greene Film Reader: Reviews, Essays, Interviews, and Film Stories, Applause Theatre Book Publishers (New York, NY), 1994.

SCREENPLAYS

(With Basil Dean) Twenty-one Days, Columbia, 1937, released as Twenty-one Days Together, 1940.

(With Terence Rattigan) Brighton Rock, Pathe, 1946, released as Young Scarface, Mayer-Kingsley, 1952.

The Fallen Idol, British Lion, 1948.

The Third Man, British Lion, 1949.

(With John Stafford) The Stranger's Hand, British Lion, 1954.

Loser Takes All, British Lion, 1956.

Saint Joan (adapted from George Bernard Shaw's play), United Artists, 1957.

Our Man in Havana, Columbia, 1960.

The Comedians, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1967.

OMNIBUS VOLUMES

3: This Gun for Hire; The Confidential Agent; The Ministry of Fear, Viking (New York, NY), 1952, published as Three by Graham Greene: This Gun for Hire; The Confidential Agent; The Ministry of Fear, 1958.

Three Plays, Mercury Books (London, England), 1961.

The Travel Books: Journey without Maps [and] The Lawless Roads, Heinemann (London, England), 1963.

Triple Pursuit: A Graham Greene Omnibus (includes This Gun for Hire, The Third Man, and Our Man in Havana), Viking (New York, NY), 1971.

Works also published in additional collections.

JUVENILE

This Little Fire Engine, Parrish (London, England), 1950, published as The Little Red Fire Engine, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard (New York, NY), 1952.

The Little Horse Bus, Parrish (London, England), 1952, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard (New York, NY), 1954.

The Little Steamroller, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard (New York, NY), 1955.

The Little Train, Parrish (London, England), 1957, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard (New York, NY), 1958.

EDITOR

The Old School (essays), J. Cape (London, England), 1934.

H. H. Munro, The Best of Saki, 2nd edition, Lane (London, England), 1952.

(With brother, Hugh Greene) The Spy's Bedside Book, Rupert Hart-Davis (London, England), 1957.

(Author of introduction) Marjorie Bowen, The Viper of Milan, Bodley Head (London, England), 1960.

The Bodley Head Ford Madox Ford, Volumes 1 and 2, Bodley Head (London, England), 1962.

(And author of epilogue) An Impossible Woman: The Memories of Dottoressa, Moor of Capri, Viking (New York, NY), 1976.

(With brother, Hugh Greene) Victorian Villainies, Viking (New York, NY), 1984.

OTHER

Contributor to 24 Short Stories, Cresset (London, England), 1939; Alfred Hitchcock's Fireside Book of Suspense, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1947; andWhy Do I Write?, Percival Marshall (London, England), 1948. Contributor to periodicals, including Esquire, Commonweal, Spectator, Playboy, Saturday Evening Post, New Statesman, Atlantic, London Mercury, New Republic, America, and Life.

The Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, has manuscripts and typescripts of most of Greene's books, plus working drafts and final manuscripts of various short stories and articles, as well as much of the correspondence. There are also holdings of Greene's work at the Lilly Library, Indiana University; the Pennsylvania State University Library; the Library of Congress; and the British Museum Library.

Adaptations

Screenplays based on Greene's books and stories include: Orient Express, 1934; This Gun for Hire, 1942; The Ministry of Fear, 1944; The Confidential Agent, 1945; The Smugglers, 1948; The Heart of the Matter, 1954; The End of the Affair, 1955; The Quiet American, 1958 and 2002; Across the Bridge, 1958; The Power and the Glory, 1962; The Living Room, 1969; The Shipwrecked, 1970; May We Borrow Your Husband?, 1970; The End of the Affair, 1971 and 2000; Travels with My Aunt, 1973; England Made Me, 1973; A Burned-out Case, 1973; The Human Factor, 1980; Beyond the Limit, 1983; Strike It Rich, 1990.

Sidelights

Graham Greene is considered among the most widely read of all major English novelists of the twentieth century. In such works as Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, and The Quiet American, Greene wrote critically of the most important facets of human existence: how human beings treat each other and think of their souls. According to Dictionary of Literary Biography contributors Andrew Macdonald and Gina Macdonald, "Greene's most common themes include betrayal and guilt; the complexity of living; the impossibility of finding clear cut answers; man's psychology when on the run; and man's alienation from himself, his environment, and his fellow man."

Greene's enormous popularity and critical recognition is based largely upon his "Catholic" and political novels. Though variously classified as "entertainments" and novels proper, each reflects his serious preoccupation with aspects of spiritual edification, moral turpitude, ideological commitment, and the potential for salvation in the modern world. Drawing upon the narrative conventions of crime and spy fiction, Greene's novels often involve exotic international settings and alluring depiction of murder, adultery, political intrigue, suicide, assassination, and pursuit. The protagonists are typically fallen or hapless characters whose moral failings, both innate and socially conditioned, reflect a broad range of corruption and suffering, especially as caused by extremes of disengagement and orthodoxy. "In his world, in which evil dominates, Greene takes a good-bad man and puts him in a situation where his potentials for evil and good inevitably collide, where what is at stake transcends integrity," remarked Richard Hauer Costa in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. "If the character is really good while seeming bad, nothing will serve him better than his vulnerability. Greene paves hell with heavenly intimations until, finally, innocence—that is, freedom from a controlling guile or cunning—takes over everything, even corruption, and a state that Greene calls grace is reached."

Becoming a Writer

Born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England, Greene was one of six children of Charles Henry Greene, headmaster of Berkhamsted School, and Marion R. Greene, a relative of author Robert Louis Stevenson. A precocious introvert and sensitive soul, Greene endured a miserable childhood at the hands of his moralizing father and boarding school brutes. At age sixteen he suffered a nervous breakdown and briefly fled home, leading to a period of psychoanalytic treatment. Greene's unhappy adolescence, punctuated by intense boredom and flirtations with suicide, informed much of his early writing and iconoclastic sentiments.

Upon graduating from Berkhamsted School, Greene attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied modern history and earned an undergraduate degree in 1925. While at Oxford, Greene briefly joined the Communist Party and met his future wife, Vivien Dayrell Browning, whom he married in 1927. Shortly before their marriage, he converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism.

Greene worked as a sub-editor for the London Times from 1926 until the publication of his first novel, The Man Within, in 1929, after which he became a full-time writer. Weak sales of his next two novels prompted him to write Stamboul Train, the first of Greene's many popular thrillers to be subtitled "entertainments," including A Gun for Sale, The Confidential Agent, The Ministry of Fear, and The Third Man. His first volume of short stories, The Basement Room and Other Stories, appeared in 1936. During the 1930s, Greene wrote film criticism for the Night and Day and the Spectator. He also traveled to Liberia and Mexico to gather experiences for his fiction, recorded in the travelogues Journey without Maps and The Lawless Roads. The novels It's a Battlefield and England Made Me illustrate his lifelong leftist sympathies, which later were distinguished by notorious associations with Soviet spy Kim Philby, Fidel Castro, and Ho Chi Minh. After serving with the British Foreign Office in Sierre Leone during World War II, Greene witnessed political upheavals in Indochina, the Belgian Congo, Haiti, and Cuba as a freelance journalist.

The "Catholic" Novels

Greene produced the first of his "Catholic" novels with Brighton Rock in 1938, followed by The Power and the Glory in 1940, The Heart of the Matter in 1948, and The End of the Affair in 1951. These works offer insight into the theological concepts of mortal sin and atonement, drawing attention to the paradoxical virtues of vice itself. Set in the working-class neighborhood of a seaside resort town, Brighton Rock "deals overtly with the questions of sin, damnation, and salvation," Costa wrote. The work concerns Pinkie Brown, a teenage hoodlum who murders a rival for betraying his gang. Pinkie marries Rose, a naive waitress, to stonewall testimony against him. Ida Arnold, a local matron and unlikely investigator, eventually takes up the case and hounds Pinkie to his death. The religious theme comes to the forefront when Rose consults a priest about Pinkie's damnation. As Costa noted, "When Rose mentions that Pinkie was a Catholic, the priest answers, summing up not only the theme of this novel but a major theme in all of Greene's religion-oriented works: 'Corruptio optimi est pessima. . . . I mean—a Catholic is more capable of evil than anyone. I think perhaps because we believe in him—we are more in touch with the devil than other people.'"

The Power and the Glory "is the most Catholic of Greene's novels and the most accessible of his so-called Catholic novels," Bernard Bergonzi remarked in British Writers. "The abiding themes of his fiction are very apparent: pursuit, suffering, betrayal, the clash of innocence and experience. The Power and the Glory is also a study of sanctity and failure, seeing the two as intimately related." The novel is set
in Mexico during the anticlerical persecutions of the 1930s. The protagonist is a renegade Catholic priest who continues to carry out his ecclesiastic duties despite official sanctions that have driven away all other priests. An unrepentant though self-loathing sinner—he is an alcoholic and father of an illegitimate child—the "whiskey priest" is tracked by a mestizo, or half-caste, and is eventually captured by the police. His martyrdom is complicated by the contradictory facts of his charity and unsaintly indulgence. According to Costa, "The Power and the Glory is Greene's plea for the priest's heroic, or, in religious terms, saintly, status despite constant self-humiliation, a status that allows him to die for his faith despite his impulse for self-preservation. Given the fortification of belief, felix culpa (doctrinally translated as the 'fortunate fall') takes on imperatives no less deterministic than the hamartia ('tragic flaw' or 'error') of classical tragedy. In Greene, the humiliated, like the humble, can inherit the earth."

The Heart of the Matter, which takes place in Sierra Leone, involves Major Scobie, a Catholic policeman and devout husband whose tragic vice—pity—leads him to betray his wife, religion, and profession in an extramarital affair and diamond smuggling scheme that drives him to suicide. As David Punter observed in the Reference Guide to English Literature, "We are left in little doubt of Scobie's essential honesty and goodness; but circumstances are too much for him, and he is impaled on the dilemma of whether to put the love of God or the love of fellow-humans first." Punter added that the novel ends ambiguously: "Is Scobie saved or not? We are drawn to believe that he is; that the pity he has felt for his suffering fellow-mortals is in some way reciprocated by God's final pity for him, even though he dies in a state of damnation. Like all of Greene's work, The
Heart of the Matter is in the last analysis a religious book, but in a special sense in that Greene uses the problems of faith to shed a brilliant light on our everyday worldly actions."

Among Greene's most overt religious novels, The End of the Affair involves an English woman whose passionate love for God is mistaken for an adulterous affair by her jealous husband and her former lover. "In many ways The End of the Affair is one of Greene's best books," stated Bruce Bawer in the New Criterion. "It is exquisitely shaped and paced, the people and their relationships seem real, and both the passion and the bitterness ring true; though plenty of abstractions are brought into play, one does not constantly have the feeling that the characters serve merely as symbolic tokens." Writing in The Vital Tradition: The Catholic Novel in a Period of Convergence, Gene Kellogg remarked that "the theme of The End of the Affair is significant: it is love and loyalty to God over love and loyalty to man; it is trust in God's own responsibility and a placing of final trust in the goodness of creation when one reaches the place beyond which one's own effort cannot prevail."

Political Intrigue and Moral Ambiguity

Post-war novels such as The Quiet American, A Burnt-out Case, The Comedians, and The Honorary Consul reflect Greene's interest in international affairs during the mid-twentieth-century Cold War. The works are set against the backdrop of trouble spots in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Though drawing attention to the sociopolitical circumstances of each locale, the religious concerns of earlier novels persist in his overarching theme of moral ambiguity.

The Quiet American is set in Vietnam during the turbulent 1950s. Noted for its anti-Americanism, Greene juxtaposes the practical hedonism of Thomas Fowler, a cynical English journalist, with the puritanical innocence of Alden Pyle, an idealistic American whose naive and self-righteous assumptions about Indochinese culture lead to his demise. "As Greene builds an image of local intrigue, of beleaguered outposts and perilous ventures behind Communist lines, and finally of murder," wrote Andrew and Gina Macdonald in Dictionary of Literary Biography, "he incorporates methods and conventions from both the spy and the detective story, but exposes a concern of more far-reaching significance than who killed or will kill whom: rash, unthinking political involvement in a complex culture, whatever the motives."

A Burnt-out Case involves a leprosarium in the Congo where Querry, a disillusioned architect, grapples with his lack of compassion for human suffering by engaging in a futile battle with the mutilating disease, drawing parallels between the ravages of leprosy and a life without faith. "Querry, fleeing his reputation, his past sins, and to some extent himself . . . , buries himself alive in a hopeless, depressing labor of self-abnegation," wrote Andrew and Gina Macdonald. "A Burnt-out Case suggests that traditional Christianity is as powerless to aid the spiritual leper as the dedicated doctor is powerless to help end the physical destruction of leprosy until the disease has run its course." "Perhaps what Querry is seeking is a return to usefulness and integrity," observed A. A. DeVitis in Graham Greene. "The doctor and the priests teach him much about genuine compassion and understanding; the lepers teach him much about suffering and unhappiness."

The Comedians takes place in Haiti during the dictatorship of François Duvalier. The story revolves around the experiences of Brown, a lapsed Catholic and hotel owner engaged in a doomed affair with a diplomat's wife, the Smiths, an American couple committed to vegetarianism, and Jones, a con man, as they are drawn into revolutionary activities. Brown's view of God as a "practical joker" underscores his indifference and the absurdity of the appalling violence and exploitation under Duvalier. The Comedians "is Greene's version of contemporary dark comedy, employing farce and sensationalism as aspects of its method," DeVitis remarked. "In his attempt to portray the reluctance of contemporary man to accept divine affiliation, Greene examines, problematically to be sure, human commitment and political engagement in a world menaced by the fear and confusion emanating from a power cult."

Set in Paraguay, The Honorary Consul centers upon Eduardo Plarr, a doctor of English-Paraguayan descent who aids a Paraguayan guerrilla group. Among the rebels is Rivas, Plarr's former classmate and an ex-priest. Plarr becomes entangled in an ethical dilemma when the guerrillas kidnap an elderly ambassador, Charley Fortnum, whom Plarr is called upon to care for. Fortnum's young wife is also Plarr's mistress, further complicating his moral obligations. DeVitis noted: "When Plarr is brought in to check on Fortnum's physical condition after the kidnaping, the stage is set for a series of agonizing decisions of major moral significance: should harmless innocents like Fortnum (his position is merely honorary) be used as pawns to achieve worthy ends? What role should the Church, in the person of the former priest Rivas, play when confronted by the most appalling injustice? What obligations does Dr. Plarr have to Fortnum, to his mistress, to his profession, and to his mixed cultural heritage?"

Not just a novelist, Greene wrote in more than a dozen other genres, including novellas, short stories, plays, radio plays, screenplays, essays, memoirs, biographies, autobiographies, travel books, poetry, and children's literature. Many critics believe that, among serious novelists, Greene had the closest contact with film. More than twenty of his own novels and stories have been filmed. Furthermore, Greene wrote original screenplays, including the

1949 classic The Third Man. Greene also wrote several plays, notably The Living Room, The Potting Shed, and The Complaisant Lover.

Among his many distinctions and honorary degrees, Greene received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1949 for The Heart of the Matter, garnered an Academy Award nomination in 1950 for his screenplay The Fallen Idol, was named a companion of honour in England in 1966, and received the British Order of Merit in 1986.

Widely praised for his superb narrative abilities, vivid cinematic descriptions, and compelling fusion of religious and political themes, Greene continues to be regarded as a master craftsman and formidable moralist. Critical attention is frequently directed toward his distinct religious perspective, controversial left-wing rhetoric, and recurring themes of pursuit and moral equivocation in his novels. While some of Greene's detractors find fault in his preoccupation with Catholicism, others assert the universal significance of such themes as they relate to problems of moral obligation and political commitment. As many critics note, the sympathetic
sinners, criminals, and double agents in Greene's works symbolize the degradation of the individual and necessity of moral compromise amid the hellish realities of violence, corruption, and poverty in the modern world. His fiction is acclaimed for its entertainment value and provocative examination of sin, moral relativism, and problems associated with spiritual faith in the contemporary world. As Bergonzi noted, Green's novels are "continually on the edge of other literary or dramatic forms: the adventure story, the thriller, the morality play, the gangster film, the dream-fantasy, the fable. He is not so easily categorized as some of his contemporaries. He is, indeed, like a realist of an earlier generation in being popular; whatever else Greene is, he is an outstanding storyteller, and his general reputation seems assured."

If you enjoy the works of Graham Greene

If you enjoy the works of Graham Greene, you may also want to check out the following books:

Henry James, The American, 1877.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1902.

Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, 1947.

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Allain, Marie-Françoise, The Other Man: Conversations with Graham Greene, Bodley Head (London, England), 1983.

Allen, Walter, The Modern Novel, Dutton (New York, NY), 1965.

Allott, Kenneth, and Miriam Farris Allott, The Art of Graham Greene, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 1951, Russell & Russell (New York, NY), 1965.

Atkins, John, Graham Greene, John Calder (London, England), 1958.

Bestsellers 89, Issue 4, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1989.

Boardman, Gwenn R., Graham Greene: The Aesthetics of Exploration, University of Florida Press (Gainesville, FL), 1971.

British Writers, Supplement 1, Scribner (New York, NY), 1987.

Cassis, A. F., Graham Greene: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, Scarecrow (London, England), 1981.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 1, 1973, Volume 3, 1975, Volume 6, 1976, Volume 9, 1978, Volume 14, 1980, Volume 18, 1981, Volume 27, 1984, Volume 37, 1986, Volume 70, 1992, Volume 72, 1992.

Crawford, Fred D., Mixing Memory and Desire: The Waste Land and British Novels, Pennsylvania State University Press (University Park, PA), 1982, pp. 103-123.

DeVitis, A. A., Graham Greene, Twayne (New York, NY), 1964.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 13: British Dramatists since World War II, 1982; Volume 15: British Novelists, 1930-1959, 1983; Volume 77: British Mystery Writers, 1920-1939, 1989; Volume 100: Modern British Essayists, Second Series, 1990; Volume 162: British Short-Fiction Writers, 1915-1945, 1996; Volume 201: Twentieth-Century British Book Collectors and Bibliographers, First Series 1999; Volume 204: British Travel Writers, 1940-1997, 1999.

Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1985, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1986.

Duraan, Leopoldo, Graham Greene: An Intimate Portrait by His Closest Friend and Confidant, Harper (San Francisco, CA), 1994.

Evans, R. O., editor, Graham Greene: Some Critical Considerations, University of Kentucky Press (Lexington, KY), 1963.

Falk, Quentin, Travels in Greeneland: The Cinema of Graham Greene, Quartet (London, England), 1984.

Fraser, G. S., The Modern Writer and His World, Derek Verschoyle (London, England), 1953.

Gordon, Hayim, Fighting Evil: Unsung Heroes in the Novels of Graham Greene, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1997.

Greene, Graham, The Graham Greene Film Reader: Reviews, Essays, Interviews & Film Stories, Applause Theatre Book (New York, NY), 1994.

Greene, Graham, with A. F. Cassis, Graham Greene: Man of Paradox, Loyola University Press (Chicago, IL), 1994.

Hoskins, Robert, Graham Greene: An Approach to the Novels, Garland (New York, NY), 1998.

Hynes, Samuel, editor, Graham Greene: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1973.

Kermode, Frank, Puzzles and Epiphanies, Chilmark (New York, NY), 1962.

Kunkel, Francis L., The Labyrinthine Ways of Graham Greene, Sheed & Ward (New York, NY), 1959.

Living Writers, Sylvan Press (London, England), 1947.

Lodge, David, Graham Greene, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1966.

Malamet, Elliott, The World Remade: Graham Greene and the Art of Detection, P. Lang (New York, NY), 1998.

Mauriac, François, Great Men, Rockliff, 1952.

Mesnet, Maire-Beatrice, Graham Greene and the Heart of the Matter, Cresset (London, England), 1954.

Miller, Robert H., Graham Greene: A Descriptive Catalog, University of Kentucky Press (Lexington, KY), 1979.

Mueller, Walter R., The Prophetic Voice in Modern Fiction, Association Press (New York, NY), 1959.

Newby, P. H., The Novel: 1945-1950, Longmans, Green (New York, NY), 1951.

O'Faolain, Dean, The Vanishing Hero, Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 1956.

Orwell, George, The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 1: An Age Like This; Volume 2: My Country Right or Left; Volume 3: As I Please; Volume 4: In Front of Your Nose, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1968.

Pendleton, Robert, Graham Greene's Conradian Masterplot: The Arabesques of Influence, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Prescott, Orville, In My Opinion, Bobbs-Merrill (Indianapolis, IN), 1952.

Reed, Henry, The Novel since 1939, Longmans, Green (New York, NY), 1947.

Reference Guide to English Literature, 2nd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1991.

Shelden, Michael, Graham Greene: The Enemy Within, Random House (New York, NY), 1994.

Sherry, Norman, The Life of Graham Greene, Viking (New York, NY), Volume 1: 1904-1939, 1989; Volume 2: 1939-1955, 1995; Volume 3: 1956-1991, 2004.

Sinyard, Neil, Graham Greene: A Literary Life, Macmillan (New York, NY), 2003.

Stratford, Philip, Faith and Fiction, University of Notre Dame Press (South Bend, IN), 1964.

Vann, Jerry Donn, Graham Greene: A Checklist of Criticism, University of Kentucky Press (Lexington, KY), 1970.

Watts, Cedric Thomas, A Preface to Greene, Longman (London, England), 1997.

West, W. J. , The Quest for Graham Greene, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1998.

Wobbe, R. A., Graham Greene: A Bibliography and Guide to Research, Garland (New York, NY), 1979.

Wyndham, Francis, Graham Greene, Longmans, Green (New York, NY), 1955.

Zabel, Morton Dauwen, Craft and Character in Modern Fiction, Viking (New York, NY), 1957.

PERIODICALS

America, January 25, 1941.

Catholic World, December, 1954, pp. 172-175; August, 1969, pp. 218-221.

College English, October, 1950, pp. 1-9.

Commonweal, July 16, 1948, Evelyn Waugh, "Felix Culpa?," pp. 322-325.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), September 29, 1984.

Life, February 4, 1966.

London Magazine, June-July, 1977, pp. 35-45.

Los Angeles Times, September 25, 1980; January 2, 1981; March 20, 1985.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 23, 1988; October 23, 1994.

Modern Fiction Studies, autumn, 1957, pp. 249-288.

New Criterion, October, 1989, Bruce Bawer, "Graham Greene: The Catholic Novels," pp. 24-32.

New Republic, December 5, 1994, p. 30.

New Yorker, April 11, 1994, p. 46.

New York Review of Books, March 3, 1966; June 8, 1995; June 22, 1995.

New York Times, February 27, 1978; May 19, 1980; January 18, 1981; September 24, 1982; October 25, 1984; March 4, 1985; June 6, 1985; October 17, 1988; January 17, 1995.

New York Times Book Review, January 23, 1966; January 8, 1995.

Paris Review, autumn, 1935, Martin Shuttleworth and Simon Raven, "The Art of Fiction III: Graham Greene," pp. 24-41.

Playboy, November, 1994, p. 32.

Southwest Review, summer, 1956, pp. 239-250.

Time, September 20, 1982.

Times (London, England), September 6, 1984; September 7, 1984; March 14, 1985; February 5, 1990.

Times Literary Supplement, January 27, 1966; March 28, 1980; March 15, 1985.

Washington Post, April 3, 1980; September 20, 1988.

Washington Post Book World, May 18, 1980; October 16, 1988; March 12, 1995.

World Press Review, December, 1981, pp. 31-32; April, 1983, p. 62.