Showing results by author "Graham Greene" in All Categories

Graham Greene’s When Greek Meets Greek, a tale of two con-men trying to outwit each other, was first published in 1954. Laurence Olivier plays self-styled “Doctor” Nicholas Fenwick who runs a non-existent Oxford college. He is delighted when “Lord” Driver wants his son to study there.

Graham Greene's account of a five-year personal involvement with Omar Torrijos, ruler of Panama from 1968-81 and Sergeant Chuchu, one of the few men in the National Guard whom the general trusted completely. It is a fascinating tribute to an inspirational politician in the vital period of his country's history and to an unusual and enduring friendship.

In a prison in Occupied France during the Second World War, the order is given that every 10th inmate is to be executed. Louis Chavel, a rich lawyer, draws the short straw and barters everything he owns to exchange places with another man and survive. Destitute but free, Chavel later returns to the house that he sold for his life, where he must face the consequences of his cowardice and seek redemption. 

Wien nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, der Schwarzmarkt blüht. Der Autor Rollo Martins kommt in die Stadt, um seinen Jugendfreund Harry Lime zu besuchen, der sich mittlerweile als Schieber verdingt. Als Martins eintrifft, ist sein Freund tot. Angeblich wurde er Opfer eines Autounfalls. Eine Erklärung, die Martins skeptisch macht. Er beginnt nachzuforschen, und immer wieder kreuzt dabei ein ominöser dritter Mann seine Wege.

'The Third Man' is Graham Greene's brilliant recreation of postwar Vienna, a 'smashed dreary city' occupied by the four Allied powers. Rollo Martins, a second-rate novelist, arrives penniless to visit his friend and hero, Harry Lime. But Harry has died in suspicious circumstances and the police are closing in on his associates...'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 and his wife whilst his parents go on a fortnight's holiday, Philip realises too late the danger of lies and deceit.

The gripping tragi-comedy of a bungled kidnapping in a provincial Argentinean town tells the story of Charley Fortnum, the 'Honorary Consul', a whisky-sodden figure of dubious authority, who is taken by a group of revolutionaries. As Eduardo Plarr, a local doctor, negotiates with revolutionaries and authorities for Fortnum's release, the corruption of both becomes evident.

Vietnam, 1952: Der Reporter Thomas Fowler berichtet für die Londoner "Times" aus Saigon. Das Land steckt in einer schweren politischen Krise...

Graham Greene's 'long journey through time' began in 1904, when he was born into a tribe of Greenes based in Berkhamstead at the public school where his father was headmaster. In A Sort of Life, Greene recalls schooldays and Oxford, adolescent encounters with psychoanalysis and Russian roulette, his marriage and conversion to Catholicism and how he rashly resigned from The Times when his first novel, The Man Within, was published in 1929.

For Arthur Rowe the charity fête was a trip back to childhood, to innocence, a welcome chance to escape the terror of the Blitz, to forget 20 years of his past and a murder. Then he guesses the weight of the cake, and from that moment on he's a hunted man, the target of shadowy killers, on the run and struggling to remember and to find the truth.

Whether reporting from the London cinema, Cotswolds villages, second-hand bookshops, war zones or political trouble spots, Graham Greene's novelistic gifts for detail, drama and compassionate curiosity provide unique and resonant insights into his life and times. To know war on any continent, listen to ‘A Memory of Indo-China’; to glimpse high political chicanery, listen to ‘The Great Spectacular’; to feel the flush and aftermath of revolutionary change, take up his pieces about Cuba.

Collected Essays contains nearly 80 essays, reviews and occasional pieces composed between novels, plays and travel books over four prolific decades. From Henry James and Somerset Maugham to Ho Chi Minh and Kim Philby, the range of subjects is eclectic and stimulating, his subjects brought vividly to life. The resulting collection is as revealing as autobiography and characteristically rich in humour, insight and doubt.

Raven is a ruthless assassin, a hired killer, whose cold-blooded murder of the minister for war will have violent repercussions across Europe. As the nation prepares for battle, Raven goes on the run, hunted by the police and in search of the man who paid him in stolen banknotes, eventually unearthing the terrible truth behind his deadly assignment.

Leaving Europe for the first time in his life, Graham Greene set out in 1935 to discover Liberia, then a virtually uncharted republic on the shores of West Africa. This captivating account of his arduous 350-mile journey on foot - a great adventure which took him from the border with Sierra Leone to the Atlantic coast at Grand Bassa - is as much a record of one young man's self-discovery as it is a striking insight into one of the few areas of Africa untouched by Western colonisation. Journey Without Maps is regarded as a masterclass in travel writing.

Graham Greene tells the story of a man who betrayed his fellow smugglers and fears their vengeance. Fleeing from them, with no hope of pity, he takes refuge in a woman's house who persuades him to give evidence against his accomplices.

In 1938 Graham Greene was commissioned to visit Mexico to discover the state of the country and its people in the aftermath of the brutal anti-clerical purges of President Calles. His journey took him through the tropical states of Chiapas and Tabasco, where all the churches had been destroyed or closed and the priests driven out or shot.