Best Selling Books by Graham Greene

Meticulously chosen and engagingly annotated, this selection of letters many of them seen here for the first time gives an entirely new perspective on a life that combined literary achievement, political action, espionage, exotic travel and romantic entanglement. In several letters, the individuals, events or places described provide the inspiration for characters, episodes or locations found in his later fiction. The correspondence describes his travels in Mexico, Africa, Malaya, Vietnam, Haiti, Cuba, Sierra Leone, Liberia and other trouble spots, where he observed the struggles of victims and victors with a compassionate and truthful eye. The volume includes a vast number of unpublished letters to authors Evelyn Waugh, Auberon Waugh, Anthony Powell, Edith Sitwell, R.K. Narayan and Muriel Spark, and to other more notorious individuals such as the double-agent Kim Philby.

“What a plot! They don''t make movies like this anymore—or novels, either, except by Graham Greene” —(USA TODAY) From the author of the classics Brighton Rock and The Quiet American, a morally complex tale about a man at the mercy of deadly forces while being held in a German prison camp during World War II—featuring a new preface by Michael Korda and an introduction by the author. When Jean-Louis Chauvel, a French lawyer incarcerated in a German prison camp, is informed by his captors that three prisoners must die, he devises a plan for survival. Offering everything he owns to a fellow prisoner if he will take Chauvel’s place, he manages to escape the firing squad but soon discovers that he will continue to pay for this act for the rest of his life. An unforgettable and suspenseful novel that “deserves a place at the top of the list of world’s best literature inspired by the war” (Houston Chronicle), The Tenth Man will haunt you long after you turn the final page.

"From first page to last . . . an engrossing novel" of betrayal and espionage on a colonial outpost during World War II ( The New York Times). In a British colony in West Africa, Henry Scobie is a pious and righteous man of modest means enlisted with securing borders. But when he''s passed over for a promotion as commissioner of police, the humiliation hits hardest for his wife, Louise. Already oppressed by the appalling climate, frustrated in a loveless marriage, and belittled by the wives of more privileged officers, Louise wants out. Feeling responsible for her unhappiness, Henry decides against his better judgment to accept a loan from a black marketeer to secure Louise''s passage. It''s just a single indiscretion, yet for Henry it precipitates a rapid fall from grace as one moral compromise after another leads him into a web of blackmail, adultery, and murder. And for a devout man like Henry, there may be nothing left but damnation. Drawn from Graham Greene''s own experiences as a British intelligence officer in Sierra Leone, The Heart of the Matter is "a powerful, deep-striking novel . . . of a spirit lost in the darkness of the flesh" ( New York Herald Tribune).

Strangers in Port-au-Prince are united in the corruption, fear, and revolt of Duvalier-era Haiti in "the most interesting novel of [Greene''s] career" ( The Nation). Haiti, under the rule of Papa Doc and his menacing paramilitary, the Tontons Macoute, has long been abandoned by tourists. Now it is home to corrupt capitalists, foreign ambassadors and their lonely wives—and a small group of enterprising strangers rocking into port on the Dutch cargo ship, Medea: a well-meaning pair of Americans claiming to bring vegetarianism to the natives; a former jungle fighter in World War II Burma and current confidence man; and an English hotelier returning home to the Trianon, an unsalable shell of an establishment on the hills above the capital. Each is embroiled in a charade. But when they''re unsuspectingly bound together in this nightmare republic of squalid poverty, torrid love affairs, and impending violence, their masks will be stripped away. "While Mr. Greene . . . specialized in chronicling the moral and political murkiness he encountered in the third world . . . nowhere did he produce a more topical or damning work of fiction than [in The Comedians]" ( The New York Times). Banned in Haiti, and condemned by Papa Doc Duvalier, it was adapted by Greene into a 1967 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

This edition of Graham Greene''s prophetic novel about American involvement in the Vietnam War includes the complete text of the work, along with essays by Greene, extensive historical writings, and relevant literary criticism.

First published in 1959 against the backdrop of the Cold War, Our Man in Havana remains one of Graham Greene''s most widely read novels. It is an espionage thriller, a penetrating character study, and a political satire of government intelligence that still resonates today.

A detective and a chorus girl stalk the shadows of a murderer in this thriller from "a pioneer of the modern mood we now think of as noir" ( LA Weekly ). Born out of a brutal childhood, Raven is an assassin for hire whose latest hit—a government minister—is one calculated to ignite a war. When the most wanted man in England is paid off in marked bills, he also becomes the easiest to track—and police detective Jimmy Mather has the lead. But Raven''s got an advantage. Crossing paths with a sympathetic dancer named Anne Crowder, the emotionally scarred Raven has found someone in the wreckage of his life he can trust, maybe his only hope for salvation. Because Anne is also Mather''s fiancée. Now the fate of two men will depend on her. And either way, it''s betrayal. With its themes of deception, double cross, and the consequences of indiscriminate passion, the breathless cinematic narrative of Graham Greene''s thriller was adapted in the classic 1942 film noir, This Gun for Hire, starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. Praise for Graham Greene "A superb storyteller with a gift for provoking controversy." — The New York Times "Graham Greene had wit and grace and character and story and a transcendent universal compassion that places him for all time in the ranks of world literature." —John le Carré, New York Times–bestselling author of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

A teenage sociopath rises to power in Britain''s criminal underworld in this "brilliant and uncompromising" thriller ( The New York Times). Seventeen-year-old Pinkie Brown, raised amid the casual violence and corruption in the dire prewar Brighton slums, has left his final judgment in the hands of God. On the streets, impelled by his own twisted moral doctrine, he leads a motley pack of gangsters whose sleazy little rackets have most recently erupted in the murder of an informant. Pinkie''s attempts to cover their tracks have led him into the bed of a timid and lovestruck young waitress named Rose—his new wife, the key witness to his crimes, and, should she live long enough, his alibi. But loitering in the shadows is another woman, Ida Arnold—an avenging angel determined to do right by Pinkie''s latest victim. Adapted for film in both 1948 and 2010 and for the stage as both a drama and musical, and serving as an inspiration to such disparate artists as Morrissey, John Barry, and Queen, "this bleak, seething and anarchic novel still resonate[s]" ( The Guardian).

A leak is traced to a small sub-section of the secret service, sparking off the inevitable security checks, tensions and suspicions. The sort of atmosphere, perhaps, where mistakes could be made? For Maurice Castle, it is the end of the line anyway, and time for him to retire to live peacefully with his wife and child. But no-one escapes so easily from the lonely, isolated, neurotic world of the SIS

Relates the story of the politically motivated kidnapping of Charlie Fortnum, a minor British functionary in Argentina.

In Greene''s "magnificent tour-de-force among tales of international intrigue," rival agents engage in a deadly game of cat and mouse in prewar England ( The New York Times). D., a widowed professor of Romance literature, has arrived in Dover on a peaceful yet important mission. He''s to negotiate a contract to buy coal for his country, one torn by civil war. With it, there''s a chance to defeat fascist influences. Without it, the loyalists will fail. When D. strikes up a romantic acquaintance with the estranged but solicitous daughter of a powerful coal-mining magnate, everything appears to be in his favor—if not for a counteragent who has come to England with the intent of sabotaging every move he makes. Accused of forgery and theft, and roped into a charge of murder, D. becomes a hunted man, hemmed in at every turn by an ever-tightening net of intrigue and double cross, with no one left to trust but himself. Written during the height of the Spanish Civil War, Graham Greene''s "exciting . . . kaleidoscopic affair" was the basis for the classic 1945 thriller starring Charles Boyer and Lauren Bacall ( The Sunday Times).

Querry is assigned to a leper colony on the upper reaches of the Congo, run by a doctor as lacking in faith as he is himself.

A tormented, alcoholic priest is pursued by an idealistic lieutenant during an anti-clerical persecution in Mexico.

From "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man''s consciousness and anxiety," a novel of the interlocked fates of strangers on an international train (William Golding, Nobel Prize–winning author of Lord of the Flies ). The Orient Express has embarked from Ostend, Belgium 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).

In London during the Blitz, an amnesiac must outwit a twisted Nazi plot in this "master thriller" of espionage, murder, and deception ( Time). On a peaceful Sunday afternoon, Arthur Rowe comes upon a charity fete in the gardens of a Cambridgeshire vicarage where he wins a game of chance. If only this were an ordinary day. Britain is under threat by Germany, and the air raid sirens that bring the bazaar to a halt expose Rowe as no ordinary man. Recently released from a psychiatric prison for the mercy killing of his wife, he is burdened by guilt, and now, in possession of a seemingly innocuous prize, on the run from a nest of Nazi spies who want him dead. Pursued on a dark odyssey through the bombed-out streets of London, he becomes enmeshed in a tangle of secrets that reach into the dark recesses of his own forgotten past. And there isn''t a soul he can trust, not even himself. Because Arthur Rowe doesn''t even know who he really is. "A storyteller of genius," Graham Greene composed his serpentine mystery of authentic wartime espionage—and one the author''s personal favorites—while working for MI6 (Evelyn Waugh). But The Ministry of Fear "is more than a mere thriller . . . [it''s a] hypnotic moonstone of a novel" ( The New York Times).

"Greene had wit and grace and character and story and a transcendent universal compassion that places him for all time in the ranks of world literature…" —John le Carré Graham Greene’s first published novel tells the story of Andrews, a young man who has betrayed his fellow smugglers and fears their vengeance. Fleeing from them, with no hope of pity or salvation, he takes refuge in the house of a young woman, also alone in the world. Elizabeth persuades him to give evidence against his accomplices in court, but neither she nor Andrews is aware that to both criminals and authority, treachery is as great a crime as smuggling. The first step in a brilliant career, The Man Within offers a foretaste of Green’s recurring themes of religion, the individual’s struggles against cynicism, and the indifferent forces of a hostile world. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Jonathan Yardley. 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.

After a man is almost killed in a bombing raid, the married woman with whom he has been having an affair breaks away from him.