Henry Graham Greene was born in 1904 in Hertfordshire, England and died 1991 in Switzerland. He was a novelist, playwright and journalist. Most of his novels take place with the political backdrop of the time and place (The End of the Affair takes place in England at the end of WWII , The Power and The Glory takes place in 30s Mexico when anti-Catholicism is rampant, The Heart of the Matter takes place in WWII Sierra Leone) and deals with morality and God. Greene began to write at the urging of the therapist he was sent to when he was 15 because of his repeated suicide attempts. He graduated Balliol College with a B.A. in Modern History and became an editor at the Nottingham Journal. In 1926 he joined the Catholic Church after beginning his relationship with Vivien Browning, the woman he would marry a year later. In 1927 he became an editor at the London Times only to have to give up that job to become a full time writer. After writing a few novels, some well received some not, he began to travel the world.

Everywhere he traveled was a place in the midst of great turmoil and political change. Each major adventure would be transformed into a novel with some of the characters being real people he had met (Journey Without Maps coming from his travels through the jungles of Liberia, The Heart of the Matter from the time he spent as a British Secret agent in Sierra Leone]). He went to Cuba, Korea, Vietnam and Haiti among other places. You get the feeling that he was a professional spy that happened to be an incredible author, maybe someday we will know the extent of his service to MI6. He is the kind of writer whose own life story and personal growth are felt throughout in his stories. He is all about the frame of mind and anxiety of his well developed characters and about how they are affected, directly or indirectly, by the challenging times their stories take place in. He is an amazing author. I have only read his more famous novels, The End of the Affair, The Power and The Glory and Our Man in Havana but they were well worth the read.

Bibliography

1925 Babbling April 
1929 The Man Within
1930 The Name of Action 
1931 Rumour at Nightfall
1932 Stamboul Train 
1932 Orient Express 
1934 It’s a Battlefield 
1934 The Old School 
1935 England Made Me
1935 The Bear Fell Free 
1935 The Basement Room & Other Stories 
1936 Journey Without Maps 
1936 A Gun For Sale 
1938 Brighton Rock 
1939 The Lawless Roads 
1939 The Confidential Agent 
1940 The Power and the Glory 
1942 British Dramatists
1943 The Ministry of Fear
1946 The Little Train
1947 Nineteen Stories
1948 The Heart of the Matter
1948 Why do I Write?
1950 The Third Man
1950 The Fallen Idol  
1950 The Little Fire Engine 
1951 The Lost Childhood and Other Essays
1951 The End of the Affair 
1952 The Little Horse Bus
1953 The Little Steamroller 
1953 The Living Room 
1953 Essais Catholiques 
1954 Twenty-One Stories 
1955 Loser Takes All 
1955 The Quiet American
1957 The Spy’s Bedside Book 
1957 The Potting Shed
1958 Our Man in Havana 
1959 The Complaisant Lover 
1961 A Burnt-Out Case 
1961 In Search of a Character: Two African Journals 
1963 A Sense of Reality 
1964 Carving a Statue 
1966 The Comedians
1967 May We Borrow Your Husband? And Other Comedies of the Sexual Life
1969 Collected Essays 
1969 Travels with My Aunt
1971 A Sort Of Life
1972 Collected Stories 
1972 The Pleasure Dome
1973 The Honorary Consul 
1974 Lord Rochester’s Monkey 
1975 An Impossible Woman: The Memories of Dottoressa Moor of Capri 
1975 The Return of A.J. Raffles
1978 The Human Factor 
1980 Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party
1980 Ways of Escape 
1981 The Great Jowett 
1982 J’Accuse: The Dark Side of Nice
1982 Monsignor Quixote 
1983 Yes and No 
1983 For Whom the Bell Chimes
1984 Getting to Know the General: The Story of an Involvement
1985 Collected Plays
1985 The Tenth Man
1988 The Captain and the Enemy 
1989 Yours etc.: Letters to the Press
1990 Reflections
1990 The Last Word and Other Stories
1992 A World of My Own
1993 The Graham Greene Film Reader: Mornings in the Dark

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