Most Popular Books by Graham Greene

Greene’s “sharply, often incisively etched” novel of the interlocked fates of unwary strangers on a train from Belgium to Constantinople (The New York Times). The Orient Express has embarked from Ostend for a three-day journey to Cologne, Vienna, and Constantinople. The passenger list includes a Jewish trader from London with business interests in Turkey—and a score to settle; a vulnerable chorus girl on her last legs; a boozy and spiteful journalist who’s found an unrequited love in her paid companion, and her latest scoop in second class—a Serbian dissident in disguise on his way to lead a revolution; and a murderer on the run looking for a getaway. As the train hurtles across Europe, the fates of everyone on board will collide long before the Orient Express rushes headlong to its final destination. Originally published in the UK as Stamboul Train in 1932, Graham Greene’s “novel has movement, variety, interest; taken on the surface, it is an interesting and entertaining story of adventure, penetrated through and through with the consciousness of the on-rushing train, with that curious sense of the temporary suspension of one’s ordinary existence which comes to many on ship or train” (The New York Times).

When Father Quixote, a local priest of the Spanish village of El Toboso who claims ancestry to Cervantes? fictional Don Quixote, is elevated to the rank of monsignor through a clerical error, he sets out on a journey to Madrid to purchase purple socks appropriate to his new station. Accompanying him on his mission is his best friend, Sancho, the Communist ex-mayor of the village who argues politics and religion with Quixote and rescues him from the various troubles his innocence lands him in along the way.

Arthur Rowe, on an aimless afternoon stroll through wartime London, drops into a charity bazaar, has his fortune told, guesses the weight of a prize cake, and finds himself groping his way down the obscure and unmarked corridors of the Ministry of Fear. As it happens, Mr. Rowe has for some time been incapable of being frightened, and the Ministry staff has shown bad judgment in admitting him. It is their only diplomatic blunder, and it proves to be fatal.

A Monte Carlo honeymoon becomes a gamble in Graham Greene’s “superbly well told” comedy of love, marriage, and risk (J. B. Priestley). A modest London accountant on a budget, Mr. Bertram has settled on a honeymoon at the seaside resort of Bournemouth with his fiancée, Cary. However, Bertram’s boss, the solicitous Herbert Dreuther, won’t hear of anything so common. Bertram and Cary are to be married in Monte Carlo, after which they’ll be Dreuther’s guests on his private yacht and sail down the coast of Italy. It sounds too lovely to be true. And surely Bertram can afford one night at the Hôtel de Paris. But when the absentminded Dreuther fails to show, and days turn into weeks, Bertram and Cary find themselves well beyond their means. Unable to check out, trapped in luxury, and with nowhere to turn but the casino, Bertram has a plan—and absolutely no idea what there is left to lose.

This eyewitness account of religious and political persecution in 1930s Mexico inspired the British novelist’s “masterpiece,” The Power and the Glory (John Updike). In 1938, Graham Greene, a burgeoning convert to Roman Catholicism, was commissioned to expose the anticlerical purges in Mexico by President Plutarco Elías Calles. Churches had been destroyed, peasants held secret masses in their homes, religious icons were banned, and priests disappeared. Traveling under the growing clouds of fascism, Greene was anxious to see for himself the effect it had on the people—what he found was a combination of despair, resignation, and fierce resilience. Journeying through the rugged and remote terrain of Chiapas and Tabasco, Greene’s emotional, gut response to the landscape, the sights and sounds, the fears, the oppressive heat, and the state of mind under “the fiercest persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of Elizabeth” makes for a vivid and candid account, and stands alone as a “singularly beautiful travel book” (New Statesman). Hailed by William Golding as “the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety,” Greene would draw on the experiences of The Lawless Roads for one of his greatest novels, The Power and the Glory.

Henry Pulling, a retired manager, volunteers to accompany his aunt on a trip to Istanbul and soon becomes involved with an ill-assorted group of travelers on the Orient Express

Murder story involving Stockholm financier, and a brother and a sister.

The stories in this book, all written between 1929 and 1954, share the themes that feature so strongly in Graham Greene''s novels: humour and violence, pity and hatred, betrayal and pursuit. Comic, sad, shocking and tragic, they recount the tales of Mr. Maling''s loud stomach, destructive gangs of children, indiscretions revealed and secrets uncovered.

A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Untouched by human feeling, Pinkie is isolated, a figure of pure evil. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous, life-embracing Ida Arnold, who is determined to avenge Hale''s death.

Henry Miles, a civil servant, suspects that his wife Sarah is having an affair, and asks his writer friend Maurice Bendrix to contact a private investigator on his behalf. Maurice has a secret, however: he was once Sarah''s lover, and is equally keen to find out whether she was unfaithful to him too... An economical and intense adaptation.-1 woman, 4 men, 1 boy, 5 women or men

Doctor Fischer despises the human race. When the notorious toothpaste millionaire decides to hold the last of his famous parties his own deadly version of the Book of Revelations Greene opens up a powerful vision of the limitless greed of the rich. Bl

The Third Man is Greene''s brilliant recreation of post-war Vienna, a city of desolate poverty occupied by four powers. Rollo Martins, a second-rate novelist, arrives penniless in Vienna to visit his old friend and hero Harry Lime. Harry is dead, but the circumstances surrounding his death are highly suspicious, and his reputation, at the very least, dubious. Graham Greene said of The Third Man that he "wanted to entertain [people], to frighten them a little, to make them laugh" and the result is both a compelling narrative and a haunting thriller. The Fallen Idol is the chilling story of a small boy caught up in the games that adults play. Left in the care of the butler, Baines, and his wife, Philip realizes too late the danger of lies and deceit. But the truth is even deadlier. 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.

Graham Greene''s first published novel represented for the author "one sentimental gesture towards his own past, the period of ambition and hope." It tells the story of Andrews, a young man who has betrayed his fellow smugglers and fears their vengeance. "The Man Within" offers a foretaste of Greene''s recurring theme of religion and the individual''s struggles against cynicism and the indifferent forces of a hostile world.

From master storyteller Graham Greene comes the tale of Anthony Farrant, who has boasted, lied and cheated his way through jobs all over the world. Then his adoring twin sister, Kate, gets him taken on as the bodyguard of Krogh, her lover and boss, a megalomaniac Swedish financier. All goes well until Krogh gives orders that offend Anthony''s innate decency. Outraged and blind to risk, he leaks information to Minty, a shabby journalist and fellow victim of life, a decision that will lead to disastrous consequences. 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.

''Listen. You''re a patriotic Englishman. Highly respected. Been here for years. A wide circle of influential friends. It is important that we have our man in Havana, Mr Wormwold.'' Jim Wormwold, an under-employed vacuum cleaner salesman living in 1950s Cuba, is struggling to pay for his teenage daughter''s increasingly extravagant lifestyle. So when the British Secret Service asks him to become their ''man in Havana'' he can''t afford to say no. There''s just one problem... he doesn''t know anything! To avoid suspicion, he begins to recruit non-existent sub-agents, concocting a series of intricate fictions. But Wormwold soon discovers that his stories are closer to the truth tan he could ever have imagined... In Clive Francis'' adaptation, Graham Greene''s classic satirical novel becomes a wonderfully funny and fast-moving romp.

Querry, a world famous architect, is the victim of a terrible attack of indifference: he no longer finds meaning in art of pleasure in life. Arriving anonymously at a Congo leper village, he is diagnosed as the mental equivalent of a ''burnt-out case'', a leper who has gone through a stage of mutilation. However, as Querry loses himself in work for the lepers his disease of mind slowly approaches a cure. Then the white community finds out who Querry is...

The story of one man, an alcoholic "whiskey priest," on the run through the jungles, villages, and plantations of Mexico in the 1930s.

Graham Greene(1904-1991) es uno de los grandes creadores del thriller y en su obra está el germen de todos las derivaciones que posteriormente ha tomado el género. Entre sus obras más exitosas se cuentan Nuestro hombre en La Habana, El factor humano, El americano impasible, El poder y la gloria, El tercer hombre o El cónsul honorario.

Graham Greene (1904-1991) n''est pas seulement le grand écrivain catholique consacré par le succès de son fameux roman La Puissance et la gloire. Entré par effraction dans le royaume de la Grâce (selon le mot de François Mauriac), cet ancien membre du Foreign Office a su, même au travers des divertissements que sont des livres comme Notre agent à La Havane et Un Américain bien tranquille, dénoncer la guerre, les dictatures et ce vice suprême : l''imbécillité. Voilà pourquoi Graham Greene compte, avec George Orwell et Evelyn Waugh, parmi les géants de la littérature anglaise du XXe siècle.

Set in a provincial Argentinean town, "The Honorary Consul" takes place in that bleak country of exhausted passion, betrayal, and absurd hope that Graham Greene has explored so precisely in such novels as "The Power and the Glory" and "The Comedians." On the far side of the great, muddy river that separates the two countries lies Paraguay, a brutal dictatorship shaken by sporadic revolutionary activity; on the near side, a torpid city whose only visible cultural institution is a brothel. The foreigners of the city are refugees, each washed up on the banks of the Parana by some inner disaster or defeat: Dr. Eduardo Plarr, a physician, whose English father has vanished into a Paraguayan prison, and for whom "caring is the only dangerous thing"; Humphries, a teacher of English, who has touched bottom and accepted it; Charley Fortnum, the Honorary Consul, who at the age of sixty-one, sustained by drink and his disputed status as British Consul, still retains enough hope and illusion to marry a twenty-year-old girl from Senora Sanchez'' brothel... With gathering force, Graham Greene draws his characters into the political chaos that lies beneath the surface of South American life. Fortnum is kidnapped by Paraguayan revolutionaries who have mistaken him for the American Ambassador. Realizing their error, they threaten to execute him anyway if their demands are not met. Plarr, torn between his instinctive feeling for the revolutionaries -- one of whom is an old friend -- and his ambiguous relationship with Fortnum, whose wife he has taken as a lover, becomes involved in a tragicomedy that leads inexorably to a meaningless death. At the center of "The Honorary Consul" is Plarr, abrilliant Graham Greene creation, perhaps the most moving and convincing figure in his fiction. Plarr is a man so cut off from human feeling, so puzzled by the emotional needs of men like Fortnum, that he is paradoxically vulnerable, chillingly exposed, and required in the end Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.