Graham Greene Popular Books
Graham Greene Biography & Facts
Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century.Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. He was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivien Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland. Early years (1904–1922) Henry Graham Greene was born in 1904 in St John's House, a boarding house of Berkhamsted School, Hertfordshire, where his father was house master. He was the fourth of six children; his younger brother, Hugh, became Director-General of the BBC, and his elder brother, Raymond, an eminent physician and mountaineer. His parents, Charles Henry Greene and Marion Raymond Greene, were first cousins, both members of a large, influential family that included the owners of Greene King Brewery, bankers, and statesmen; his mother was cousin to Robert Louis Stevenson. Charles Greene was second master at Berkhamsted School, where the headmaster was Dr Thomas Fry, who was married to Charles' cousin. Another cousin was the right-wing pacifist Ben Greene, whose politics led to his internment during World War II. In his childhood, Greene spent his summers with his uncle, Sir Graham Greene, at Harston House in Cambridgeshire. In Greene's description of his childhood, he describes his learning to read there: "It was at Harston I found quite suddenly I could read—the book was Dixon Brett, Detective. I didn't want anyone to know of my discovery, so I read only in secret, in a remote attic, but my mother must have spotted what I was at all the same, for she gave me Ballantyne's The Coral Island for the train journey home—always an interminable journey with the long wait between trains at Bletchley..." In 1910, Charles Greene succeeded Dr Fry as headmaster of Berkhamsted. Graham also attended the school as a boarder. Bullied and profoundly depressed, he made several suicide attempts, including, as he wrote in his autobiography, by Russian roulette and by taking aspirin before going swimming in the school pool. In 1920, aged 16, in what was a radical step for the time, he was sent for psychoanalysis for six months in London, afterwards returning to school as a day student. School friends included Claud Cockburn the journalist, and Peter Quennell the historian. Greene contributed several stories to the school magazine, one of which was published by a London evening newspaper in January 1921. Oxford University He attended Balliol College, Oxford, to study history. During 1922 Greene was for a short time a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and sought an invitation to the new Soviet Union, of which nothing came. In 1925, while he was an undergraduate at Balliol, his first work, a poorly received volume of poetry titled Babbling April, was published.Greene had periodic bouts of depression while at Oxford, and largely kept to himself. Of Greene's time at Oxford, his contemporary Evelyn Waugh noted that: "Graham Greene looked down on us (and perhaps all undergraduates) as childish and ostentatious. He certainly shared in none of our revelry." He graduated in 1925 with a second-class degree in history. Writing career After leaving Oxford, Greene worked as a private tutor and then turned to journalism; first on the Nottingham Journal, and then as a sub-editor on The Times. While he was working in Nottingham, he started corresponding with Vivien Dayrell-Browning, who had written to him to correct him on a point of Catholic doctrine. Greene was an agnostic, but when he later began to think about marrying Vivien, it occurred to him that, as he puts it in A Sort of Life, he "ought at least to learn the nature and limits of the beliefs she held". Greene was baptised on 26 February 1926 and they married on 15 October 1927 at St Mary's Church, Hampstead, London. He published his first novel, The Man Within, in 1929; its favourable reception enabled him to work full-time as a novelist. Greene originally divided his fiction into two genres (which he described as "entertainments" and "novels"): thrillers—often with notable philosophic edges—such as The Ministry of Fear; and literary works—on which he thought his literary reputation would rest—such as The Power and the Glory. The next two books, The Name of Action (1930) and Rumour at Nightfall (1932), were unsuccessful; and he later disowned them. His first true success was Stamboul Train (1932) which was taken on by the Book Society and adapted as the film Orient Express, in 1934. Although Greene objected strongly to being described as a Roman Catholic novelist, rather than as a novelist who happened to be Catholic, Catholic religious themes are at the root of much of his writing, especially Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, and The End of the Affair; which have been named "the gold standard" of the Catholic novel. Several works, such as The Confidential Agent, The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, The Human Factor, and his screenplay for The Third Man, also show Greene's avid interest in the workings and intrigues of international politics and espionage. He supplemented his novelist's income with freelance journalism, book and film reviews for The Spectator, and co-editing the magazine Night and Day. Greene's 1937 film review of Wee Willie Winkie, for Night and Day—which said that the nine-year-old star, Shirley Temple, displayed "a dubious coquetry" which appealed to "middle-aged men and clergymen"—provoked Twentieth Century Fox successfully to sue for £3,500 plus costs, and Greene leaving the UK to live in Mexico until after the trial was over. While in Mexico, Greene developed the ideas for the novel often considered his masterpiece, The Power and the Glory.By the 1950s, Greene had become known as one of the finest writers of his generation.As his career lengthened, both Greene and his readers found the distinction between his 'entertainments' and novels increasingly problematic. The last book Greene termed an entertainment was Our Man in Havana in 1958. Greene also wrote short stories and plays, which were well received, although he was always first and foremost a novelist. His first play, The Living Room, debuted in 1953.Michael Korda, a lifelong friend and later his editor at Simon & Schuster, observed Greene at work: Greene wrote in a small black leather notebook with a black fountain pen and .... Discover the Graham Greene popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Graham Greene books.
Best Seller Graham Greene Books of 2024
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A Way Through the Wood
Nigel BalchinA psychological study of marriage, loyalty and justice, A WAY THROUGH THE WOOD is a remarkable postwar novel.'A superb storyteller' SUNDAY TIMES 'I'd place him up there with Graha...
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The Aspern Papers and Other Tales
Henry James & Michael GorraA wonderful new collection of Henry James's short stories about the relationship between art and life, edited by Michael Gorra.This volume gathers seven of the very best of Henry J...
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Absolution
Alice McDermottAN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERNamed a Best Book of the Year by Time, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Kirkus Reviews, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Oprah Daily, Real Simple, and VogueA ...
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David Copperfield
Charles DickensNow a major film directed by Armando Iannucci, starring Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Peter Capaldi and Ben Whishaw'The greatest achievement of the greatest of all novelis...
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A Beautiful Place to Die
Malla NunnAwardwinning screenwriter Malla Nunn delivers a stunning and darkly romantic crime novel set in 1950s apartheid South Africa, featuring Detective Emmanuel Cooper a man caught up i...
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The Complete Fables
Aesop & Olivia TempleAesop was probably a prisoner of war, sold into slavery in the early sixth century BC, who represented his masters in court and negotiations, and relied on animal stories to put ac...
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The Collected Novels Graham Greene
Graham GreeneThe End of the Affair "A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses a moment of experience from which to look ahead..." "This is a record of hate far more than of love,...
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Graham Greene
Michael G. BrennanIn this significant rereading of Graham Greene's writing career, Michael Brennan explores the impact of major issues of Catholic faith and doubt on his work, particularly in re...
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Manon Lescaut
Abbe PrevostWhen the young Chevalier des Grieux first sets eyes on the exquisitely beautiful and charming Manon Lescaut they fall passionately in love. But his happiness turns to bitter despai...
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A Journal of the Plague Year
Daniel Defoe & Christopher Bristow'The most reliable and comprehensive account of the Great Plague that we possess' Anthony Burgess In 1665 the plague swept through London, claiming over 97,000 lives. Daniel Def...
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The Index of Self-Destructive Acts
Christopher Beha“Beha tackles finance, faith, war, entitlement, and no end of selfdestructive acts. I greatly admired both the writing and the ambition.” Ann PatchettA New York Times Editors’...
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Waverley
Walter Scott & Andrew HookSet against the backdrop of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, Waverley depicts the story of Edward Waverley, an idealistic daydreamer whose loyalty to his regiment is threatened when...
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Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
Yiyun LiIn her first memoir, awardwinning novelist Yiyun Li offers a journey of recovery through literature: a letter from a writer to likeminded readers. “A meditation on the fact that li...
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Dark at the Crossing
Elliot AckermanNATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST“Transports readers into a world few Americans know” Washington PostA timely new novel of stunning humanity and tension: a contemporary love story set o...
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Confessions of an English Opium Eater
Thomas De Quincey & Barry Milligan"Thou has the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium!" Determined to counter the lies about opium that had been told by travellers to the Orient and the medical profes...
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The Spire
William GoldingSuccumb to one churchman's apocalyptic vision in this prophetic tale by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies, William Golding (recorded by Benedict Cumberbatc...
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Remembrance
Ray BradburyIconic author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury believed that, someday, a collection of his letters could illuminate the ...
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Barnaby Rudge
Charles Dickens & John Bowen'One of Dickens's most neglected, but most rewarding, novels' Peter AckroydSet against the backdrop of the Gordon Riots of 1780, Barnaby Rudge is a story of mystery and suspense wh...
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The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories
Malcolm BradburyThis anthology is in many was a ‘best of the best’, containing gems from thirtyfour of Britain's outstanding contemporary writers. It is a book to dip into, to read from cover to c...
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Selected Essays
Samuel JohnsonThis volume contains a generous selection from the essays Johnson published twice weekly as 'The Rambler' in the early 1750s. It was here that he first created the literary charact...
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The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories
Leo Tolstoy, Ronald Wilks, Anthony Briggs & David McDuffThis edition includes: The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Happy Ever After, and The Cossacks. Mortality was one of Tolstoy's most persistent themes, and all of the stories in this volume ar...
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Confessions of an Italian
Ippolito Nievo & Frederika RandallAn overlooked classic of Italian literature, this epic and unforgettable novel recounts one man's long and turbulent life in revolutionary Italy.At the age of eightythree and neari...
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A Pound of Paper
John BaxterIn the rural Australia of the fifties where John Baxter grew up, reading books was disregarded with suspicion, owning and collecting them with utter incomprehension. Despite this,...
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The Small Back Room
Nigel BalchinA true modern classic, THE SMALL BACK ROOM is a towering novel of the Second World War.Sammy Rice is a weapons scientist, one of the 'back room boys' of the Second World War. A cri...
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Greene on Capri
Shirley Hazzard, Shirley Hazzard Steegmuller & The Estate of Shirley Hazzard SteegmullerThe subtle portrait of a great but difficult man and a legendary island.When friends die, one's own credentials change: one becomes a survivor. Graham Greene has already had biogra...
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The Princesse De Cleves
Madame LafayetteSet towards the end of the reign of Henry II of France, The Princesse de Clèves (1678) tells of the unspoken, unrequited love between the fair, noble Mme de Clèves, who is married ...
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Effi Briest
Theodor Fontane & Hugh RorrisonUnworldly young Effi Briest is married off to Baron von Innstetten, an austere and ambitious civil servant twice her age, who has little time for his new wife. Isolated and bored, ...
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Graham Greene
Robert H. MillerEnglish novelist, shortstory writer, playwright and journalist, Graham Greene was one of the most widely read novelist of the 20thcentury, a superb storyteller. Adventure and suspe...
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Dombey and Son
Charles Dickens & Andrew Sanders'There's no writing against such power as this one has no chance' William Makepeace ThackerayA compelling depiction of a man imprisoned by his own pride, Dombey and Son explores t...
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Scattershot
Bernie TaupinNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An evocative, cleareyed, and revealing memoir by Bernie Taupin, the lyrical master and longtime collaborator of Elton John“I loved writing, I loved chroni...
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Darkness Falls from the Air
Nigel BalchinThe classic novel of the London Blitz, DARKNESS FALLS FROM THE AIR captures the chaos, absurdity and ultimately the tragedy of life during the bombardment.Featured on BACKLISTED po...
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Romola
George Eliot & Dorothea BarrettOne of George Eliot's most ambitious and imaginative novels, Romola is set in Renaissance Florence during the turbulent years following the expulsion of the powerful Medici family ...
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Graham Greene
Robert O. EvansThis collection of fourteen essays by American and English scholarsmany of them hitherto unpublished and all of them selected with a view to avoiding the duplication of essays alre...
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Our Woman in Havana
Sarah RainsfordGraham Greene saw the Castros rise; Sarah Rainsford watched them leave. From the street where Wormold, the hapless hero of Greene’s Our Man in Havana, plied his trade, BBC foreign ...
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Graham Greene
Fulvio FulviGraham Greene (19041991), ovvero un “incredulo cristiano”, era così consapevole delle sue fragilità da sperare che “Dio gli stesse sempre alle calcagna”, come confidava a una giorn...
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The Madam and the Spymaster
Urs Brunner, Nigel Jones & Julia SchrammelThis extraordinary story of a highclass Berlin brotheltaken over by the Nazi secret serviceis one of the last untold tales of World War II. There is no book ...
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The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
Angela CarterDesiderio, an employee of the city under a bizarre reality attack from Doctor Hoffman's mysterious machines, has fallen in love with Albertina, the Doctor's daughter. But Albertina...
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Home at Grasmere
Dorothy Wordsworth & William WordsworthA continuous text made up of extracts from Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal and a selection of her brother's poems. Dorothy Wordsworth kept her Journal 'because I shall give William pl...
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The Quest For Graham Greene
W. J. WestW.J. West has unearthed and pieced together allnew material regarding Graham Greene, which sheds light into the darker regions of Greene's personal, religious, financial, and i...
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The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
John Mandeville & Charles MoseleyOstensibly written by an English knight, the Travels purport to relate his experiences in the Holy Land, Egypt, India and China. Mandeville claims to have served in the Great Khan'...
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The Book of the Courtier
Baldesar Castiglione & George BullIn The Book of the Courtier (1528), Baldesar Castiglione, a diplomat and Papal Nuncio to Rome, sets out to define the essential virtues for those at Court. In a lively series of im...
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Graham Greene
Robert HoskinsThis study reveals Greene in a dual role as author, one who projects literary experience into his view of life and subsequently projects both his experience and its "literary" inte...