Customer Reviews (1)

A novel that says a lot about love, hate, happiness and grief
Alfred Jones works as a translator and letter-writer in a chocolate factory in Vevey. He gets acquainted with Anna-Luise, daughter of Dr Fischer of Geneva. The latter became a millionaire by selling toothpaste and lives in a mansion in Versoix.
A strange marriage it is because Jones is in his fifties and Anna-Luise could almost be his daughter - she is 21. But this is perhaps what she seeks, a father more sympathetic than Dr Fischer whom Jones detests because of his pride, his contempt of all the world and his cruelty. He doesn't even oppose to his marrying Anna-Luise.
Dr Fischer is famous for the parties he gives at his house. The parties are always attended by the same people: General Kruger (a divisionnaire in the Swiss army), Richard Deane (a film star), Mr Kips (the bent lawyer) and Mrs Montgomery who acts as a hostess. Though wealthy, all these characters are in one way or other dependant on Dr Fischer which allows him to humiliate, despise and belittle them during those parties. Only Jones doesn't allow himself to be mocked which greatly displeases Dr Fischer.
With his last party - The Bomb Party - Graham Greene shows the limitless greed of the rich and the party becomes a farce, a black comedy and a painful satire, and it allows the author to show that cynicism is actually only a façade behind which weak characters like to hide. ... Read more

Product Description
Victor Baxter is a young boy when a secretive stranger known simply as "the Captain" brings him from his boarding school to London. Victor becomes the surrogate son and companion of a woman named Liza, who renames him "Jim" and depends on him for any news about the world outside their door. Raised in these odd yet touching circumstances, Jim is never quite sure of Liza’s relationship to the Captain, who is often away on mysterious errands. It is not until Jim reaches manhood that he confronts the Captain and learns the shocking truth about the man, his allegiances, and the nature of love. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

a very spare but not minor novel at all...."what is love anyway?"
Graham Greene's "The Captain and the Enemy" is a touching meditation on love that is challenging because of its spareness and the tone in two acts. Among the last things Greene wrote, he has clearly pared this down to the minimum.

In the first parts, Greene's stage is the familiar forgotten byways of depressed England, with characters that cling not so much to respectability but mere function in a notch above those on the public dole and in council flats.

The story is a love triangle, but the mystery is all why, and perhaps even "if" there is real love. All the characters are flawed and warped, and the tale is narrated by a boy-child, who remembers but is not haunted by his mother's death, and also is strangely disaffected by his father's absence and near abandonment in a scruffy public school. He is almost sketched as a person without feelings, and has a tenuous attachment to filial duty: feelings being the romantic form of love, and duty being the mature form of love.

Our no-wave anti-hero is plucked from this dull obscurity to go on an adventure writ small: an adventure simply because of its bizarre nature. He is "won" by a con-man and sometime associate of his father, and led away from school to live as the child of a broken woman in the basement of an abandoned Victorian home turned into unrented dead-end flats. His life with the woman, the comings and goings of his new foster father "The Captain" and the occasional appearance of his father, "the Devil" populate his memory in a diary he keeps.

In the second part of the novel, the woman has died, and the child, now a young man on his own, travels to "Greeneland" the far-away dysfunctional half-colonized frontier land of Panama just before the transition to sovereignty. He must tell his absent foster father The Captain of her death, but cannot bring himself to do so until his own place in the The Captain's life is secured or defined. In this section there is both intrigue and mystery, dark dealings with spies, politics, money, possibly drugs, possibly guns, and a rickety plane. But the real underlying question remains the most pressing mystery: did this most dysfunctional of families made up of such broken people, ever love each other?

Clever readers will see that Greene has once again woven Catholicism's deepest questions into the narrative, for the "family" mirrors The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, while "The Devil" -our narrator's real father- incarnates a fugitive and absent malevolence as each character gropes emotionally toward the other in an attempt to solidify a sense of themselves as loved, loveable, and capable of love.

One of Greene's finest works, and profoundly moving.

Alone in the world
This is a minor novel by Greene, although his major themes are here. It was his last and the feeling that prevails is the loneliness of life, the feeling of being a permanent outsider. Victor is the son of a cruel man and a deceased mother, miserably living in boarding school. On his twelfth birthday, instead of his father a complete stranger shows up to pick him up and take him to lunch and maybe a movie. But instead of returning the boy, the stranger, known only as "The Captain", tells him he has won him at backgammon, and proposes him to go and live in London. Hating boarding school, Victor decides to go to London, where he is placed in a young woman's apartment, to live there as a kind of stepson. The woman is the occasional mistress of the Captain and former lover of Victor's father. Victor adopts the new name of Jim. The Captain, who is obviously a criminal, appears at increasingly longer intervals. In the meantime, Jim and the woman, Liza, develop a kind of mother-and-son relationship. Eventually Jim grows up and becomes a journalist. When the woman dies, Jim looks for the Captain and finds out he is living in Panama, where he travels to meet him. There he discovers the Captain is involved in drug-dealing.

Although this is not at the level of Greene's masterpieces, it is an interesting one to read, because Greene's obsessions are present in a haunting way: moral dilemmas, solitude, the strange relationships we develop with the people our fate brings us close to. Worth a try.

A wonderful surprise
Publishers reprinting an author's entire opus are always claiming obscure works have been unfairly overlooked. In the case of "The Captain and the Enemy," that is surely true. Any reader will find all sorts of intrigues in this little-known work. But even for a Greene fan, like me, this was something of a revelation--one also made possible through the brilliant introduction by John Auchard. You'll gain more insight into a complex author from this short novel and new introduction than from three volumnes of most biographies. DGibson from Brooklyn.

Greene's Last Novel
I had read a few negative online reviews of this novel, had looked at the the cover (with King Kong standing there), and I had few hopes.I find the book a remarkable book---and just those qualities that some readers disliked were qualities which impressed me.The fact that some characters, most characters here, are not "fleshed out" is just right, for these people exist in a kind of spare landscape of slim hope and love, and they are no more attached to worldly things or even common social interaction, say, Ahab. As much as anything else here (and perhaps because the world depicted is somewhat vaguely suggested), we get the feel of Graham Greene's deep and mature consciousness, for in fact we are roaming around the inside of his mind more than around any landscape populated with Dickensian people (despite what one of the back-cover reviews says).Greene wrote this novel only three years before he died, and I found it a privilege to be in the company of his maturity, his encroaching despair, his sense of bleakness and crassness, all touched by hints of the power of love.It's a book that deserve more attention, and perhaps you need to be a bit older than younger to appreciate it.

Not Greene's best
This is not one of Greene's best books, but it is worth a read if you are a fan of his works. About a third of the way through this book I was ready to chalk it up as a major disappointment. The payoff comes late, and when it does it makes the read well worth the time. The last third of the book is a marvelous sketch of relationships and love. Greene really knows how to put the subtleties of life into words.

This isn't a "buyer beware," it's just a "buyer be patient!" The Greene touch is here, you just have to get to it. ... Read more

Product Description
Bernard Bergonzi has been reading Graham Greene for many years; he still possesses the original edition of The End of the Affair that he bought when it was published in 1951. After so much recent attention to Greene's life he believes it is time to return to his writings; in this critical study Bergonzi makes a close examination of the language and structure of Greene's novels, and traces the obsessive motifs that recur throughout his long career. Most earlier criticism was written while Greene was still alive and working, and was to some extent provisional, as the final shape of his work was not yet apparent. In this book Bergonzi is able to take a view of Greene's whole career as a novelist, which extended from 1929 to 1988. He believes that Greene's earlier work was his best, combining melodrama, realism, and poetry, with Brighton Rock, published in 1938, a moral fable that draws on crime fiction and Jacobean tragedy, as the masterpiece. The novels that Greene published after the 1950s were very professional examples of skilful story-telling but represented a decline from this high level of achievement. Bergonzi challenges assumptions about the nature of Greene's debt to cinema, and attempts to clarify the complexities and contradictions of his religious ideas. Although this book engages with questions that arise in academic discussions of Greene, it is written with general readers in mind. ... Read more

Product Description
Bored with his daily run between two villages, the little train decides to run away. ... Read more

Product Description
The late novelist's friend and confidant recounts the events, conversations, thoughts, and feelings that made up the times Greene and Duran shared during the last twenty-seven years of Greene's life. National ad/promo. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Too Much of So Little
Avoid this frustrating book, unless you want to wade through too many pages of nothing in order to learn very little about Graham Greene's later years traveling with his friend, a Spanish Roman Catholic priest, in Spain in the 1970s and 1980s.I wanted to love this book, hoping it would give some real insights into the later years of Graham Greene. All one really learns is the names of places visited, the food eaten and wine consumed, and hotels stayed at.Very boring.Duran points out two things that ruin this book.First, he claims his editor wanted the book to feature him as strongly as Greene; however, there isn't hardly anyone who cares about the life or family of this obscure priest.Second, as he writes on p. 39, he deliberately avoids mentioning anything that Greene ever told him connected to family or private matters. Yet, Duran claims Greene all but begged him to keep details of their trips and to write a book.Sadly, we learn next to nothing about Greene the Roman Catholic in later life (e.g., what happened to lead him from being a lapsed Catholic to one who appears obsessed with the sacraments).Duran's "worship" of Greene comes across as both needy and pathetic, with Greene being able to do no real wrong or write anything substandard.Even as late as 1994, when everyone knows the name of Greene's long-term married mistress, who is with him during his dying process, Duran tries to hide her as merely Greene's very close personal friend.And Duran the professor of literature thinks Greene's last few novels are as worthwhile as his much earlier masterpieces. We learn that Greene doesn't like bread or water and that he won't toast with water.Duran tells us Greene is a great conversationist, but he then merely mentions the topics they discuss without going into much detail about what Greene actually said.A small part near the end where he discusses Greene's much neglected wife is about the only interesting thing, but even that is spoiled by the long section at the end covering the period 1989-1991 as Greene's health failed and he has nothing to say and little energy left to do anything.The book is repetitive because it doesn't go in chronological order, so Duran is far too often repeating himself.And the number of minor mistakes involving people, places, and dates is astonishing.For example, he and his editor should apologize to German Field Marshall Kesselring, misspelled "Keyserling". Duran may have 16 volumes of journals, each of about 190 pages in length, about their vacationing, but he made sure to keep all that was of value in learning about the "real" Greene out of his book.One can only hope it is better in the Spanish version!

Could have used an editor
Are there no editors anymore? After I'd sat down with the book for less than half an hour I found numerous items that any competent editor would have found, errors that are reminiscent of what happens if I write something at three in the morning and don't check it again after getting a good nights' sleep. I found similar problems in the Sherry bio. There is an interesting book here, but the final product lacks the touch that a good editor could have lent the work. ... Read more

Product Description
An intimate portrait of acclaimed novelist Graham Greene reveals previously hidden facts about his mysterious double life as a spy and his complex sex life and provides a radical reinterpretation of some of his major works. 30,000 first printing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

A Life Dissected
This is a most frustrating and fascinating biography of a most private man.Read it before judging, but beware that it is a hard read for anyone who loves Greene. Having read Greene's novels and his travel books, I love his works, including the earliest, latest, and greatest.I wanted to know about the man behind the words.Start this one off by reading the "Author's Note: Graham Greene and Biography" at the end of the book. Shelden discusses how Greene and his estate have worked hard to prevent all biographers except for Norman Sherry's massive three volume authorized biography. But as has been pointed out, Sherry leaves out as much as he reveals. Shelden's work appears designed to be aggressively provocative, exposing Greene's flaws and foibles. While his sourcing is not as extensive as might be desired, it does appear to be at least minimally sufficient for many of the "revelations", e.g., the issue of Greene and homosexuality. The material about Greene's spying--on behalf of the British government and others--is most interesting. Sheldon spends too much time summarizing Greene's works. His critiques of each work are as subjective as any other critic. I respectfully disagreed with many. He is spot on in regard to Greene's anti-semitism. His comments about Greene's actual beliefs about economics and politics are supported by the evidence; Greene was hardly the left-wing anti-capitalist of his public persona. Greene is not the first author to have details of certain unpleasant realities exposed; however, what certainly should not be surprising is that he was as flawed as so many of his characters, who were to varying degrees extensions of the complex man and his many interesting wordly experiences.

Not a reliable surveyof Greene
This "biography" spends much time summarizing the plot of nearly every work of fiction written by Greene [and I must admit, Shelden does a remarkable job at *this* task], but loses nearly all credibility when every story is "traced" back to possible real-life situations.For example, *The Third Man* is Greene's coverage of his knowledge of the Hitler assasination attempt [courtesy of his time with the British Secret Service], as was reported to him to British defector Kim Philby(yes, *that* Kim Philby).Now, before you say, "well, could happen", I say yes, except: bear in mind that Shelden's sources are *not* private letters and journals by Greene, but newspaper reviews and readily-available texts of Greene's interviews - which, as anyone who studies Greene in any capacity, is scarely enough to delve into this novelist's highly-precocious mind.Look at the sources at the end of the book.... NO exposure of the private Greene at all.

Stickto Shelly.

Well-documented? I think not
One of my authors asked me recently about whether I wanted footnotes in a piece that he was writing. I told him that if he was making any claims that people might dispute, he should footnote the h... out of it. Michael Shelden doesn't do this. His biography is full of controversial claims but his critical apparatus is very weak. In fact, one of his claims, that a gardener at an uncle's home was a central figure in his life, doesn't seem to have any documented source at all.

If the claims were restricted to gardeners, this would not be an important detail, but Shelden makes an assortment of claims, identifying Greene as a homosexual, an antisemite, a closet fascist, and even insinuates that Greene was a murderer as well. Of all of these claims, only the antisemitism claim seems to have any merit and what merit there exists is for a weaker antisemitism than Shelden claims. The claim of homosexuality doesn't jibe with Shelden's own account of Greene's life.

Perhaps most amusing is that while Shelden is eager to point out Greene's fondness for deception, he doesn't seem to acknowledge the possibility that he himself was being deceived.

Well researched expose of Graham Greene
The negative reviews preceding mine certainly do not mince words incastigating Shelden's biography of Graham Greene.However, they offernothing to refute Shelden's well documented research; they are simplyexpressions of displeasure (and possibly embarrassment--how do youreconcile your world-class super-sophisticated British novelist totingaround a teddy-bear like Radar O'Reilly?)Although I have been fascinatedby much of Greene's fiction, and will continue to read and re-read his bestworks, I think Shelden makes quite a good case that Greene was an extremelymanipulative, bisexual, anti-Semitic, hypocrite who stood for nothing inhis personal life.Indeed, Greene belongs with Rousseau, Hemingway,Brecht, et al., in Paul Johnson's famous book of misfits, Intellectuals. Greene's sham Catholicism is particularly galling, since he converted as ayoung man only as a means to win Vivien's hand, yet he used it for the restof his life as a bogus defense against those who might question thesincerity and depth of his religious sentiments.As Shelden says, if onedid not know that Greene was (allegedly) Catholic, it would be verydifficult to readworks like Brighton Rock or The Comedians as some kindof theological statement about grace and transcendence.Let's face it:Greene was only looking out for number one.There is nothing wrong withthat, except if you are passing yourself off as a humanist.

Graham Greene: the Enemy Within
I read the other reviews and I think people don't like a biography that doesn't polish a popular authors life.i found this biography to be very good.It piqued my interest in Graham Greene.I shall read anotherbiography and compare the two.I will also read Graham Greene's Memoirs. No biography or autobiography should considered 100% fact because abiographer may interview someone with bad memory and miss certain cluwalong his or her investigation.And autobiographers also tend to embellishthings.So it's better to read more than one account of a persons lifebefore making conclusions. ... Read more

Product Description
For everyone who’s ever wondered what it really takes to be a spy, legendary author Graham Greene (The Third Man, The Quiet American) and his brother Hugh have compiled this irresistible selection of fiction, memoir, and tricks of the trade straight from the all-time masters of espionage. Here is a perfectly safe way to discover the dangerous secrets many spies have died to learn.

Want to know how to hide a map of an enemy fort in a butterfly sketch? Wonder why James Bond himself advises always drinking vodka with pepper?

Who hasn’t fantasized about being a secret agent or been captivated by the mysterious lore of spycraft? From the words of William Blake, D. H. Lawrence, and Thomas Mann—all suspected of spying in three great wars—to classic espionage stories by Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, Eric Ambler, Ian Fleming, and Graham Greene himself, this fascinating compendium of all things spy makes the perfect companion for the armchair agent in all of us. If this book divulged any more secrets, it would’ve had to be written with invisible ink. (Find out how to make your own inside!) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

misleading book
Very misleading package. There's a brief Graham Greene story, plus a miscellany of unorganized, sometimes fragmentary, and rarely interesting ephemera from writers you've never heard of. It's almost surely not what you're thinking it is. I'd pass. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

The Story of a Lone Gunman
This Gun For Hire, by Grahame Greene

Raven was a hired killer. His harelip made him easily identifiable, so he left no witnesses. [Some sort of psychological motivation?] A letter of introduction gets him admitted, and he leaves a piece of paper as "evidence". The police are searching for any clue to this murder. Raven meets Chumley and gets his payment in £5 notes (nothing smaller?). But this was stolen money and police are looking for Raven. A double cross! Raven will get his revenge by following Chumley to get to the men at the top. There are some amazing coincidences in this story. Raven meets Anne, Anne meets Chumley, Anne talks too much. Anne's boyfriend is one of the policemen looking for Raven.

There is a psychological discussion in the dark train shed. [It is not as long as in "The Ministry of Fear" and is supposed to explain motivation. Does it?] The gas mask drill sounds like some kind of perverse holiday. But it allows Raven to enter the corporate headquarters with Chumley and get Sir Marcus, the evil old man who caused it all. The last chapter ties up the loose ends in telling more about the characters in this story. The solution to the assassination averted a war - for now.

It seems implausible for Sir Marcus to use one of his flunkeys to arrange a murder directly. Usually they would use an intermediate who has no backtrail to the guys at the top; a cut-out agent. (See the James Bond films for examples.) This is a good story, even if it quite implausible for Raven to travel abroad for the murder as if he were a "James Bond".

Early Greene crime novel captivates
The assassination of an influential public figure leads to a complicated web of betrayal and murder.As the double-crossed assassin hunts down his former employers, a policeman and his fiancee find themselves on opposite sides of the fray.Graham Greene's writing style is very cinematic here; many passages played out effortlessly in my mind's eye like scenes from a vintage film noir.It almost makes me think that it may have easy for Carol Reed to direct the classic "The Third Man" (also based on a Greene story).Greene is not satisfied with simply providing an involving plot; he gives his characters depth and dimension and interesting dialogue as well.Recommended.

solid entertainment
Greene just can't be less than substantial, even when he's writing an early noir crime thriller.The depth of insight -- both spiritual and psychological -- is impressive, even by the standards of later Greene novels.His characters are real, the story unfolds with only a minimum of coincidences, the action is gritty and satisfying and unpredictable, and a rich sense of underlying humanity pervades the work.As always with Greene, compassion -- the fierce volcanic eruptions of pity in unexpected peoples and places -- is a major theme.And as usual, a subtle Catholic sensibility is at work throughout, making relevant to 20th-century man a few of the Faith's most central tenets.

Good, though sometimes grim, fun.Picture Peter Lorre in the Raven role, and Sidney Greenstreet in the Chumley part, and Hitchcock overseeing it all, and you get some idea, perhaps, of what Greene had in mind.Highly recommended.

Not What I'd Hoped For
Given the world-class reputation of the author, I assumed I was in for a treat -- or at least a solidly diverting yarn. Unfortunately I found myself aching to put this book down and pick up something else. The story is aboutan assassin working for munitions suppliers who kills an influentialBritish anti-war figure in the days leading up to WWII. He is betrayed andraces to confront his betrayers before the police catch up with him. Soundslike good stuff, but for some reason it isn't. Part of the problem is thatGreene gets sidetracked into painting little portraits of every peripheralcharacter encountered. While well-fleshed out characters are requiredingredients for any good story, Greene goes overboard and the story dragsand suffers as a result. Next time I'll try one of his more famous books. ... Read more

Product Description
This 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" interpretation into his fiction; and it defines two phases of Greene's novels through the changing relationship between writer and protagonists. The first phase progresses from acutely sensitive, self-divided young men somewhat like the young Greene to embittered, alienated characters ostensibly at great distance from their creator. The second phase (1939-) includes a series of "portraits of the artist" through which Greene confronts more directly the tensions and conflicts of his private life. Includes bibliography and index. ... Read more

Product Description
October 2, 2004, marks the centenary of one of the twentieth century’s most important literary figures: Graham Greene. In volume three, Norman Sherry brings this magisterial biography—twenty-seven years in the making—to a close. Following Greene, still an agent for the British government, from prerevolutionary Cuba and the Belgian Congo to adulterous interludes in Capri and Antibes, Sherry shows Greene at the height of his fame, in the company of other literary luminaries such as T. S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, Ian Fleming, and Noël Coward.

Through unparalleled access to letters, to diaries, and to Greene himself,Sherry reveals with insight and eloquence Greene’s obsessions, his complicated religious feelings, and most significantly, his art. This volume, with its wealth of new and shocking details, brings to a close what Margaret Atwood called "the definitive biography." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A Disappointing Conclusion to a Massive Life Lived Darkly
Having read the earlier two volumes and each of Greene's available published novels, I am sadly forced to say that the culmination of Sherry's massive three-volume series is both...far too long and not very interesting.Where was Sherry's editor? Clocking in at over 800 pages of primary text Vol. 3 is nearly 300 pages longer than the much better Vol. 2 and almost 100 pages longer than the slightly better Vol. 1. Given Greene's obsessive desire not to reveal his true self and his personal life to Sherry (his authorized official biographer), this volume breaks with the earlier two by being much more critical of Greene's life and willing to discuss the havoc he wrought on both his myriad lovers and their devastated families. Sherry was far too afraid of making Greene mad while he was still alive that he pulled his punches in Vol. 1. Then Sherry was too afraid of losing access to friends and family so he is still hesitant in Vol. 2. But finally with Vol. 3 his subject can no longer hurt or help him, neither can nearly all of the now deceased family and friends. Sherry does a great job pointing out how Greene's move to the left in the 1970s and 1980s was a direct result of no longer questioning some select few in authority and power. And Sherry is right to point out that the later Greene is one obsessed by good food, great wine, and a life of luxury. Greene the previously hardship enduring world traveler has become Greene the decadent aristocrat, one who hangs out with leftist thugs while advocating for the common man. Too bad Sherry then goes out of his way to put himself into the mind and life of Greene, after Sherry had already revealed in detail how Greene refused to let the biographer get to know his subject. For far too long in too many sections, Sherry the unsuccessful biographer becomes Sherry the literary critic who uses the works in lieu of biography.

This volume is nearly destroyed by the far too lengthy amount of direct quoting from Greene's novels and plays. Since Sherry was never able to pierce Greene's vail of secrecy, he wrongly concluded that he then could use the works themselves to supply information that Greene wouldn't. But who wants to wallow through page after page of text from novels and plays, when many a reader has already read the same and the savvy editor could've and should've pruned savagely the quoting.

The work also fails, as did the first two volumes, to the extent that Sherry relies far too heavily on Greene's redacted diaries and his letters.Whole sections are nothing more than quotations or allusions to quotes from Greene's letters. Sherry failed in his primary duty: get the subject to be open and honest, discussing his life in detail with the biographer. Having failed that, Sherry should've ruthlessly pointed out how Greene refused to participate in his own authorized biography.

A summary of the life: Greene was a horrible husband and father, a mediocre spy, a political gadfly out to tweak all sides, a good book editor/publisher, someone usually excessively loyal to most friends but sometimes shockingly disloyal to other friends, but a magnificent writer whose writings benefited greatly from his extensive travels, his reporter's eyes for details, and his unfailing ability to bring people and places to life.

Michael Sheldon's earlier one volume biography, while overly aggressive and hostile to Greene, is a far more interesting and lively read. One can only hope some aggressive editor creates a more readable abridged one volume life by Sherry that runs to say about 900 pages, about 300 from each of Sherry's three volumes. Now that would be far more readable and equally informative!

Maturity
Graham Greene died in 1991.His writing career dated back to 1925.The introduction is about finding Greene:wars, politics, geography.He was adventurous and curious.His nature had variety.He was plagued by depressions.Greene moved from his father's school to Oxford.He was fastidious, sensitive, observant.

Shortly after graduation Graham Greene acquired a job as subeditor of THE TIMES.His third novel was published and became a literary success.He got married, having converted to Catholicism for his wife's sake.Another novel, STAMBOUL TRAIN, was successful.He traveled to Liberia and wrote, JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS.

While conceiving BRIGHTON ROCK, Greene went to Mexico to write about religious persecution.Back in England he arranged to rent a studio in which to write and turned out THE CONFIDENTIAL AGENT and THE POWER AND THE GLORY.Next came THE MINISTRY OF FEAR.

In 1942 Greene went to Sierra Leone for the SIS and wrote THE HEART OF THE MATTER.After the war Catherine Walston became Greene's lover for thirteen years.The complex and beautiful love was best described in THE END OF THE AFFAIR.

Greene wasa compulsive writer, producing five hundred words a day.In 1955 Greene was fifty-one, the year of THE QUIET AMERICAN.He had a feeling for victims.Greene had an outcast of a brother and his mother had always put his father first.In the fifties Greene spent three weeks in China.At that time Greene was trying to hold onto at least two women and was failing with one, Catherine.

OUR MAN IN HAVANA came out in 1958.Greene served as a watchdog for the Bodley Head publishing firm.He assisted in bringing out a favorite of his, Ford Maddox Ford.After OUR MAN IN HAVANA, book and movie, Greene sought material forA BURNT-OUT CASE.That book is an introspective study of crisis.

Greene was a man of five different personalities.His frantic busyness began after Catherine Walston refused marriage.His contact with her became more and more tenuous.The journey to the Congo took place in 1959.In visiting a leper colony Greene was seeking spiritual hope.The doctor in charge opined that Greene was the opposite of a journalist.He did not look at people like cockroaches.Revising BURNT-OUT CASE without Catherine Walston was difficult.

THE COMPLAISANT LOVER, a play, was a success, but the next play wasn't.THE COMEDIANS was set in Duvalier's Haiti.By focusing on Duvalier, Greene escaped himself.Greene is more revelatory in his fiction than he is in his memoirs.(He was a shy man.)

The biographer believes his last masterpiece was THE HONORARY CONSUL.Greene wanted to tell the truth.He possessed a sharply sceptical mind.Work on THE HUMAN FACTORwas interrupted in 1963 by the Kim Philby affair.The book came out in 1978.

For the sake of his work, Greene gave up being a comrade to men and a lover to women.In 1980 Greene received death threats.Faith and doubt were the topics of MONSIGNOR QUIXOTE, 1982.

The book traces the mature working habits of the writer.He arranged his life so as not to interfere with the inner voice.He found material for his work in his travels.The five women he loved, basically serially, were of immense importance to his literary and personal development.The biographer has achieved excellence through documenting exhaustively the life of the writer on his artistic and spiritual journeys.

Weakest of the three volumes
While Volume 3 of the Graham Greene Biography is interesting it is not as riveting as the first two volumes by Sherry. In the first two volumes (and especially in volume 2 which reads almost like a fantastic novel) the author Norman Sherry points all his guns on Greene in excellent thorough and succinct reportage.It makes for an enthralling read and some of the best biography I have read. Unfortunately in Volume three Sherry inserts himself into the biography even going so far as to include a picture of him on a donkey in a place where Greene once was. Such puffery only distracts from the subject at hand. Sherry in volume three goes to great lengths to let you know he has talked to important people in Greene's life. Even so far as to include interview excerpts between himself and these people. This creates a very jarring affect and interferes with the story telling. It is downright annoying. Sherry also ends up in these long circular arcs repeating material already covered in other volumes and revealing little new in the process. It remains an intriguing read especially if you have read volumes one and two.It is a real let down to see the final volume does not have the same high standards as the first two either because Sherry is taking himself more seriously than his topic or because he is an egomaniac. Still there is enough interesting about Greene to keep you turning the pages in this overwritten 800 plus page tome that could have received a good editing job.

Docta Docta
Hey, this book rocks!
Buy it too, I know Dr. Sherry, my aunt works for him in San Antonio, and I have met this brilliant man on a several occasions.I have not read the book, I do not know where to buy but online, and I have no mney to buy it.But Dr. Sherry has put hours and years into his study and collections of Graham Greene, even a fourth volume.
Help this brother out and buy his book.
ME.

Greene still interesting, book a disappointment
Having read the first two volumes I eagerly awaited the third. It is a major disappointment for at least three reasons. The first is that Sherry seems to have merged his identity with that of Greene, making frequent references to himself (and name dropping in the process). He even includes a photo of himself on a donkey, making himself look a little ridiculous. Second, he is obsessed with Greene's sex life. While quite interesting, Greene's sexploits get a little tedious after a few hundred pages. Finally, Sherry takes up many pages with summaries and long quotes from Greene's books. I can read Greene's books for myself, thank you very much. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
The story of Barbara Greene's travels with her cousin Graham Greene. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

It had been Graham Greene's idea to explore tropical West Africa
From the Back of the Book.

The map of Liberia was virtually blank, the interior marked 'cannibals'. It was a far cry from the literary London of 1935, and the marvellous result of the exploration was Journey without Maps. But the gifted young author was not travelling alone. His twentythree year old cousin Barbara had rashly agreed to go with him, also busy taking notes in the jungle.

Too Late to Turn Back contains the humourous, foot-sore and richly evocative African adventure of a young woman who set out from the world of Saki and the Savoy Grill and returned quite profoundly changed. ... Read more