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Reading lists

Classic books all teens should own

The spy story is the perfect formula for a gripping read.

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The greatest spy thrillers in literature

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Where to start with Graham Greene’s books

Selected Stories

Duel Duet

Graham Greene has wit and grace and character and story and a transcendent universal compassion that places him for all time in the top ranks of world literature

Greene was a force beyond his books... The outsider, the dissenter, the spoiled priest, the failure, the classic underdog - out of characters such as these Greene made novels and stories which have enriched hundreds of thousands of readers

This ingenious volume of paired stories is a wonderful introduction to the short fiction of Graham Greene… A master at work

Graham Greene (Author) 
Graham Greene was born in 1904. He worked as a journalist and critic, and in 1940 became literary editor of the Spectator. He was later employed by the Foreign Office. As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, three books of autobiography, two of biography and four books for children. He also wrote hundreds of essays, and film and book reviews. Graham Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour. He died in April 1991. 
 
Yiyun Li (External Editor) 
Yiyun Li is the author of three novels, Where Reasons End, The Vagrants and Kinder Than Solitude, and two short-story collections, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, as well as the memoir, Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life. She has won literary awards including the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the Guardian First Book Award, and was listed among Granta's 21 Best of Young American Novelists 2007. Her stories have been published in the New Yorker, Paris Review and elsewhere. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a recipient of a Windham-Campbell Prize and a Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton University.

Graham Greene, known for his iconic novels, also wrote extraordinary short stories. Here some of the best have been arranged into pairs - to be read as a duel or duet - by novelist and Greene aficionado, Yiyun Li. 
 
Twenty-two of Greene’s very best stories are collected here, each of them bearing the hallmark themes that characterise his great novels: innocence and vengeance, love and hate, pity and violence. 
 
Writer and Greene aficionado, Yiyun Li, has arranged the stories into pairs, to be read together in contrast or in harmony – as a duel or a duet. In doing so Li draws out the extraordinary power in Greene’s work, creating an ingenious new perspective on a writer we thought we knew. Unexpected, surprising and wide-ranging, this is the short fiction of one of the twentieth century’s greatest and most adored storytellers, revealing his brilliance as never before. 
 
‘No twentieth-century writer had a subtler mind for human comparison’ Zadie Smith 
 
‘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 
 
'One of the most important British writers of the twentieth century' Daily Telegraph 
 
‘A superb storyteller’ New York Times 
 
‘One of the finest writers of any language’ Washington Post 
 
‘One of our greatest authors’ Independent 
 
SELECTED AND INTRODUCED BY YIYUN LI

Eight full-cast productions including The End of the Affair, Our Man in Havana & Monsignor Quixote

The Graham Greene BBC Radio Drama Collection: The Later Years

A definitive collection of eight full-cast BBC Radio productions, featuring stellar talent including Alex Jennings, Michael Kitchen, Ben Miles and Bernard Cribbins 
 
‘Great value for money and a fine celebration of one of the most important English authors of the second half of the Twentieth Century. Greene's stories are brought to life by some of the greatest British actors, and the final documentary giving voice to the writer is truly the icing on the cake.' – Greg Jameson, Entertainment Focus 
 
One of the foremost novelists of the last century, Graham Greene left an indelible mark on the world of fiction. In his many masterpieces, he introduced his fans to ‘Greeneland’ – a shadowy world of sin, redemption, treachery and sexual betrayal, occupied by complex, ambivalent characters. 
 
That world is brought vividly to life in these eight stunning BBC Radio productions. They represent the very best examples of his later work, written between 1951 and 1982, and together comprise nearly 17 hours of riveting drama. Included in this substantial box set are adaptations of his masterly novels The End of the Affair, Our Man in Havana, A Burnt-Out Case, The Comedians, The Honorary Consul and Monsignor Quixote, all starring a wealth of distinguished actors, among them Ben Miles, Adjoa Andoh, Michael Kitchen, Paterson Joseph, Bernard Cribbins and Philip Jackson. 
 
Here, too, are the radio versions of two of his superb stage plays. The Potting Shed, a gripping psychological drama centred around faith and family secrets, stars Dame Sybil Thorndike, who took the lead role in the original Broadway production. And in the ingenious two-hander Yes and No, Clive Francis plays the Director, with Alex Jennings as the Actor, whose only lines are ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. 
 
Plus, a bonus programme, Graham Greene at 80, sees the great author in conversation with writer and broadcaster Nigel Lewis, discussing his life and writing. It includes contributions from his biographer. Norman Sherry, and his brother, Sir Hugh Greene, as well as extracts from Greene’s work read by Ian Holm. 
 
Contents: 
The End of the Affair 
The Potting Shed 
Our Man in Havana 
A Burnt-Out Case 
The Comedians 
The Honorary Consul 
Yes and No 
Monsignor Quixote 
Greene at 80 
 
Text copyright © 1951 (The End of the Affair), 1957 (The Potting Shed), 1958 (Our Man in Havana), 1960 (A Burnt-Out Case), 1966 (The Comedians), 1973 (The Honorary Consul), 1980 (Yes and No), 1982 (Monsignor Quixote) 
 
With thanks to Keith Wickham of the Radio Circle for supplying several of the audio recordings. 
 
© 2025 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2025 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Great value for money and a fine celebration of one of the most important English authors of the second half of the Twentieth Century. Greene's stories are brought to life by some of the greatest British actors, and the final documentary giving voice to the writer is truly the icing on the cake.

Eight full-cast productions including Stamboul Train, Brighton Rock & The Power and the Glory

The Graham Greene BBC Radio Drama Collection: The Early Years

Alan Bennett, Claire Skinner, Charles Dance and Judi Dench are among the star casts of these superlative BBC Radio productions 
 
Graham Greene was the 20th century’s master of plot, an expert chronicler of Catholic guilt, Cold War intrigue, conflict and crime. A prolific polymath, his work incorporated serious novels, thrillers, short stories, screenplays, stage plays and more. 
 
This wide-ranging box set includes the finest examples of his early work, written between 1932 and 1948, and contains over 15 hours of unmissable drama. It includes captivating adaptations of his classic novels Stamboul Train, Brighton Rock, The Confidential Agent, The Power and the Glory, The Ministry of Fear and The Heart of the Matter, performed by an array of A-list actors including Joseph Millson, Claire Skinner, Kenneth Cranham, Stephen Rea, Charles Dance, Harriet Walter and Tom Hollander. 
 
Also featured are Greene’s only original radio play, The Great Jowett, starring Alan Bennett as the titular Oxford don, and an adaptation of his BAFTA-nominated screenplay The Fallen Idol, starring acclaimed classical actor Richard Pasco and a young Judi Dench. 
 
Concluding this definitive collection are two bonus pieces. Great Lives: Graham Greene sees war reporter Tim Butcher and presenter Matthew Parris exploring the strange world of Graham Greene, and in a fascinating 1971 interview from Radio 4’s Now Read On, the author himself discusses his novels with Magnus Magnusson – and reveals which book he considers to be his best... 
 
Contents 
Stamboul Train 
Brighton Rock 
The Great Jowett 
The Confidential Agent 
The Power and the Glory 
The Ministry of Fear 
The Heart of the Matter 
The Fallen Idol 
Great Lives: Graham Greene 
Now Read On 
 
Text copyright © 1932 (Stamboul Train), 1938 (Brighton Rock), 1939 (The Great Jowett, The Confidential Agent), 1940 (The Power and the Glory), 1943 (The Ministry of Fear), 1948 (The Heart of the Matter, The Fallen Idol) 
 
With thanks to Keith Wickham of the Radio Circle for supplying several of the audio recordings. 
 
© 2025 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. (P) 2025 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Journey Without Maps

Graham Greene's incredible journey to an unchartered land.

One of the best travel books this century

No one who reads this book will question the value of Greene's experiment, or emerge unshaken by the penetration, the richness, the integrity of this moving record

His originality lay in his gifts as a traveller. He had the foreign ear and eye for the strangeness of ordinary life and its ordinary crises

Journey Without Maps and The Lawless Roads reveal Greene's ravening spiritual hunger, a desperate need to touch rock bottom both within the self and in the humanly created world

The iconic writer's travel log from the uncharted shores of West Africa. 
 
Leaving Europe for the first time in his life, Graham Greene set out in 1935 to discover Liberia, then a virtually unmapped 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. 
 
WITH A FOREWORD BY TIM BUTCHER AND AN INTRODUCTION BY PAUL THEROUX 
 
'One of the best travel books this century' Independent

England Made Me

A powerful and unusual love story set in a world that has lost the comfort of national identity and individualism, told by one of the 20th century’s greatest writers.

Greene can never be less than wonderfully readable.

Graham Greene was born in 1904. He worked as a journalist and critic, and in 1940 became literary editor of the Spectator. He was later employed by the Foreign Office. As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, three books of autobiography, two of biography and four books for children. He also wrote hundreds of essays, and film and book reviews. Graham Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour. He died in April 1991.

Set in a world that has lost the comfort of national identity and individualism, this is a powerful and unusual love story told by one of the 20th century's greatest writers. 
 
Anthony Farrant is back home after lying and cheating his way through one job after another in the Far East. When his adoring sister Kate sets him up with a role in Stockholm as bodyguard to her boss and lover, megalomaniac financier Krogh, Anthony seems set on a path to redemption. But when he receives orders from Krogh that offend his own sense of decency, he begins to leak information to a down-at-heel journalist: a decision that will cost Anthony much more than just his job. 
 
First published in 1935, England Made Me is an early Greene novel and helped to cement his reputation as an important and exciting new writing talent. 
 
'Graham Greene has wit and grace and character and story and a transcendent universal compassion that places him for all time in the top ranks of world literature' John le Carré

Twenty-One Stories

A celebrated collection of stories from one of the most important British writers of the twentieth century. Features Greene's most famous short story, 'The Destructors'

One of the most important British writers of the twentieth century

A celebrated collection of stories from one of the most important British writers of the twentieth century. Features Greene's most famous short story, 'The Destructors'. 
 
Written between 1929 and 1954, each of these stories bears the hallmark themes that characterise Greene's great novels: betrayal and vengeance, love and hate, pity and violence. 
 
Opening with the iconic story 'The Destructors', in which a gang of schoolboys destroys a house that has survived the Blitz, Greene offers us deliciously satisfying glimpses into twenty-one worlds, with each piece written as masterfully as his novels. From the chilling climax of a children's birthday party, to a man whose youthful indiscretions come back to haunt him, these are the unmistakable work of one of the twentieth century's greatest and most adored storytellers.

The Honorary Consul

A gripping tragicomedy of a bungled kidnapping in a provincial Argentinean town, considered to be one of Greene's finest novels.

Perhaps the most enduring novel that even he has give us

The tension never relaxes and one reads hungrily from page to page, dreading the moment it will end

Greene's work attempts to link the serious moral imagination with the spirit of adventure and romance and to extend the remapping of imaginative geography first undertaken by Conrad

A superb storyteller with a gift for provoking controversy

Greene had the sharpest eyes for trouble, the finest nose for human weaknesses, and was pitilessly honest in his observations... For experience of a whole century he was the man within

A gripping tragicomedy of a bungled kidnapping in a provincial Argentinean town, considered to be one of Greene's finest novels. 
 
In a provincial Argentinian community, Charley Fortnum - a British consul with dubious authority and a notorious fondness for drink - is kidnapped by rebels in a case of mistaken identity. The young but world-weary Doctor Eduardo Plarr, is left to pick up the pieces and secure Fortnum's release, wading through a sea of incompetence and unearthing corruption among authorities and revolutionaries in the process. 
 
First published in 1973, The Honorary Consul was one of Greene's own favourites of his works and is regarded amongst his finest novels, with Plarr perhaps the most moving and convincing figure in his fiction. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE 
 
'Perhaps the most enduring novel that even he has given us' Daily Mail

Monsignor Quixote

'A deliciously funny novel and an affectionate offering to all that is noblest and least changing in the people and life of Spain' The Times

A deliciously funny novel and affectionate offering to all that is noblest and least-changing in the people and life of Spain

A powerful late work...a mixture of entertainment and deep human awareness

Monsignor Quixote is important in showing what may be the last stage of the novelist's long argument with himself about the needs, nature and effect of faith

Graham Greene's best, most absorbing, adept and effortless novel

One of the finest writers of any language... Monsignor Quixote is a tour de force and a revealing document of Greene's theological and political intelligence

A devastating blend of humour and sharp insight

Driven away from his parish by a censorious bishop, Monsignor Quixote sets off across Spain accompanied by a deposed renegade mayor as his own Sancho Panza, and his noble steed Rocinante – a faithful but antiquated SEAT 600. Like Cervantes’s classic, this comic, picaresque fable offers enduring insights into our life and times.

The Tenth Man

‘A masterpiece – tapped out in the lean, sharp prose that film work taught Greene to perfect’ – Sunday Times

Greene was a past master of the psychological thriller and this was no exception

A masterpiece - tapped out in the lean, sharp prose that film work taught Greene to perfect

All of the Greene hallmarks are there: pace, ingenuity, a sense of profundities suggested but never insisted upon

Typically full of psychological obsession and tricks of perspective, this short story plays games with the concepts of identity and freedom. Threaded through with paranoiac attempts to be sure of time, life, and death, the story ends with impenetrable paradox; with a tragedy and a travesty, a revenge and a redressal, truth and the ultimate lie

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR 
 
In a prison in Occupied France during the Second World War, the order is given that every tenth 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.

A Gun for Sale

The forerunner in its tone and themes to Greene's masterpiece Brighton Rock, A Gun for Sale is a noir thriller shot through with violence, betrayal and tormented souls. With an introduction by Robert Macfarlane.

Graham Greene taught us to understand the social and economic cripples in our midst. He taught us to look at each other with new eyes. I don't suppose his influence will ever disappear

A masterly storyteller... An enormously popular writer who was also one of the most significant novelists of his time

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

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.

The Man Within

Set in the early 19th Century, The Man Within is Greene’s only historical novel, as well his first published novel.

Full of treasures for Greene enthusiasts: a complex web of betrayal and deceit and a tormented central character

From the beginning Greene was fascinated by the thriller, which has at its heart deceit, an idea or an ideal betrayed, emotion hidden behind a mask

Greene had wit and grace and character and story, and a transcendant, universal compassion that places him for all time in the ranks of world literature

He was a writer who was intensely interested in the world more than in books or ideas. And this is why he was such a good story-teller. He was the least parochial of writers yet he was always interested in the particular

One of our greatest authors... For experience of a whole century he was the man within

This is the story of Francis Andrews, a young man whose betrayal of his fellow smugglers has left a man dead. Fearing vengeance, he flees and takes refuge in the house of a young, isolated woman who 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.

Travels With My Aunt

A witty, inventive read with anyone for a passion for travel

The only book I have ever written just for the fun of it

Rich in exactly etched and moving portraits of real human beings...the tragic and comic ironies of love, loyalty and belief

Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager, meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta for the first time in over fifty years at his mother's funeral. Soon after, she persuades Henry to abandon Southwood, his dahlias and the Major next door to travel her way, through Brighton, Paris, Istanbul, Paraguay... Accompanying his aunt, Henry joins a shiftless, twilight society: mixing with hippies, war criminals, CIA men; smoking pot, breaking all the currency regulations and eventually coming alive after a dull suburban lifetime.

The Comedians

A striking depiction of Haiti on the brink of chaos, delivered with Greene’s characteristic dark humour, forceful story-telling, and very obvious human sympathy.

The ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety.

Graham Greene (Author) Graham Greene was born in 1904. He worked as a journalist and critic, and in 1940 became literary editor of the Spectator. He was later employed by the Foreign Office. As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, three books of autobiography, two of biography and four books for children. He also wrote hundreds of essays, and film and book reviews. Graham Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour. He died in April 1991. Paul Theroux (Introducer) Paul Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1941, and published his first novel, Waldo, in 1967. He wrote his next three novels, Fong and the Indians, Girls at Play and Jungle Lovers, after a five-year stay in Africa. He subsequently taught at the University of Singapore, and during his three years there produced a collection of short stories, Sinning with Annie, and highly praised novel Saint Jack. His other publications include The Black House (1974), a novel; The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia (1975), an account of his journey by train from London to Tokyo and back; The Family Arsenal (1976); The Consul's File (1977); Picture Palace (1978; winnner of the Whitread Literary Award); A Christmans Card (1978; The Old Patagonian Express (1979); World's End and Other Stories (1980); London Snow (1980); The Mosquito Coats, which was the Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year for 1981 and the joint winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; The London Embassy (1982); The Kingdom by the Sea (1983); Doctor Slaughter (1985); Sunrise with Seamonsters (1985); The Imperial Way (1985); O-Zone (1986); Riding the Iron Rooster (1988); My Secret History (1989) and Chicago Loop (1990). 
 
Paul Theroux is married with two children and divides his time between London and Cape Cod.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PAUL THEROUX 
 
Three men meet on a ship bound for Haiti, a world in the grip of the corrupt 'Papa Doc' and the Tontons Macoute, his sinister secret police. Brown the hotelier, Smith the innocent American and Jones the confidence man - these are the 'comedians' of Graham Greene's title. Hiding behind their actors' masks, they hesitate on the edge of life. And, to begin with, they are men afraid of love, afraid of pain, afraid of fear itself...

The Quiet American

Discover Graham Green’s prescient political masterpiece

'A great writer who spoke brilliantly to a whole generation. Prophet-like' Alec Guinness

'The novel that I love the most is The Quiet American' Ian McEwan, Sunday Times bestselling author of Lessons 
 
Into the intrigue and violence of 1950s Saigon comes CIA agent Alden Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy through a mysterious 'Third Force'. 
 
As Pyle's naive optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, finds it hard to stand aside and watch. But even as Fowler intervenes he wonders why: for the greater good, or something altogether more complicated? 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ZADIE SMITH 
 
**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

The novel that I love the most is The Quiet American

There has been no novel of any political scope about Vietnam since Graham Greene wrote The Quiet American

One of the finest writers of any language

A superb storyteller - he had a talent for depicting local colour, a keen sense of the dramatic, an eye for dialogue, and skill in pacing his prose

It might be nearly 60 years since The Quiet American was first published, but it still evokes the exotic promise of the Orient, and the troubled relationship Vietnam has with the West

The Power and the Glory

'Graham Greene's masterpiece' John Updike

'Graham Greene's masterpiece' John Updike 
 
During a vicious persecution of the clergy in Mexico, a worldly priest, the 'whisky priest', is on the run. With the police closing in, his routes of escape are being shut off, his chances getting fewer. But compassion and humanity force him along the road to his destiny, reluctant to abandon those who need him, and those he cares for. 
 
'This is Greene at his raw and powerful best' Sunday Times

The most ingenious, inventive and exciting of our novelists, rich in exactly etched and moving portraits of real human beings

The power and energy of his finest novel derive from the will toward compassion, and ideal communism even more Christian than Communism. Its unit is the individual, not any class

No serious writer of this century has more thoroughly invaded and shaped the public imagination than did Graham Greene

Beautiful prose…melded with page-turning suspense… I defy anyone to read it without weeping

This is Greene at his raw and powerful best

The Power Tnd The Glory's nameless whisky priest blends seamlessly with his tropical, crooked, anticlerical Mexico. Roman Catholicism is intrinsic to the character and terrain both; Greene's imaginative immersion in both is triumphant

During a vicious persecution of the clergy in Mexico, a worldly priest, the 'whisky priest', is on the run. With the police closing in, his routes of escape are being shut off, his chances getting fewer. But compassion and humanity force him along the road to his destiny, reluctant to abandon those who need him, and those he cares for.

The Heart of the Matter

'The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being. In human relations, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths' Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter

Major Henry Scobie serves as a police officer in a British West African colony during the Second World War, a devout Catholic torn between duty and love. 
 
Stationed in a coastal colonial outpost in wartime West Africa, 1940s, Scobie prides himself on his incorruptibility. Yet as merchant ships crowd the harbour and the war tightens its grip on the empire, his private life begins to unravel. His wife Louise longs to escape the heat and isolation of the colony, and Scobie, desperate to ease her suffering, borrows money from a corrupt trader – a compromise that entangles him in blackmail. 
 
When he falls in love with Helen Rolt, a young widow shattered by loss at sea, Scobie finds himself divided between compassion and betrayal. Each lie told to protect one-woman wounds another; each attempt at mercy becomes a sin against his faith. His Catholic conscience offers no comfort, only a harsher reckoning. 
 
Set against the uneasy hierarchies and racial tensions of a British West African colony during the Second World War, The Heart of the Matter is mid-twentieth-century historical fiction driven by moral conflict.

Primarily a novel about the moral consequences of religious belief, but it is almost as importantly a novel about colonialism

Here is this man who can represent ordinary life, ordinary troubles, and make them exciting to read about

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JAMES WOOD 
 
Scobie, a police officer serving in a war-time West African state, is distrusted, being scrupulously honest and immune to bribery. But then he falls in love, and in doing so he is forced to betray everything he believes in, with drastic and tragic consequences.

The Ministry of Fear

A detective story where the detective is implicated in the crime and the hero is an enigma to the reader and to himself.

Opening a new book by Graham Greene is like settling into a gran turismo car. Nothing will go wrong

The most ingenious, inventive and exciting of our novelists

Graham Greene was born in 1904. He worked as a journalist and critic, and in 1940 became literary editor of the Spectator. He was later employed by the Foreign Office. As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, three books of autobiography, two of biography and four books for children. He also wrote hundreds of essays, and film and book reviews. Graham Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour. He died in April 1991.

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 twenty 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.

The End of the Affair

'One of the most true and moving novels of my time, in anybody's language' William Faulkner

One of the most true and moving novels of my time, in anybody's language

In a class by himself...the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety

Devastating study of the collision of different kinds of faith, betrayal and commitment

Greene's novel of illicit love captures perfectly the atmosphere of rainy wartime London - try to read this in one sitting if you can

A deliciously uncomfortable read for anyone who's allowed their heart to rule their head

One of our greatest authors - for experience of a whole century he was the man within

Greene’s classic wartime drama The End of the Affair is no less gripping for its simplicity…this unacceptable love, this devastating outcome.

A brilliantly spare examination of loneliness and the search for forgiveness in an unforgiving world… superbly atmospheric… This is Greene at his most existential and metaphysically dense… It remains an astonishing achievement

Astounding... This...is the best [Greene novel]...brimming with pain and rage. If you ever have aspirations to write a novel, read Greene. He's the perfect writer's writer

Emma Kennedy author of Letters from Brenda

Incredibly intense, passionate, and taking an unexpectedly moving…religious turn… Greene captures vividly the sense of being consumed by lust

Graham Greene (Author) Graham Greene was born in 1904. He worked as a journalist and critic, and in 1940 became literary editor of the Spectator. He was later employed by the Foreign Office. As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, three books of autobiography, two of biography and four books for children. He also wrote hundreds of essays, and film and book reviews. Graham Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour. He died in April 1991. Monica Ali (Introducer) Monica Ali was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and grew up in England. She is the author of Untold Story, In The Kitchen and Alentejo Blue. Her Sunday Times bestselling first novel Brick Lane was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the George Orwell Prize for political writing and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and has been made into an acclaimed film. Her latest novel Love Marriage is published by Virago.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MONICA ALI 
 
The love affair between Maurice Bendrix and Sarah, flourishing in the turbulent times of the London Blitz, ends when she suddenly and without explanation breaks it off. After a chance meeting rekindles his love and jealousy two years later, Bendrix hires a private detective to follow Sarah, and slowly his love for her turns into an obsession.

Stamboul Train

A classic espionage thriller from master storyteller Graham Greene, newly rejacketed in an evocative, eye-catching series style

He taught us to look at each other with new eyes. I don't suppose his influence will ever disappear

No serious writer of this century had more thoroughly invaded and shaped the public imagination than did Graham Greene

A tour de force... The realist and the romantic struggle with each other in this book, making it a kind of mental battlefield, inducing a sense of breathlessness and urgency

One of the most important British writers of the twentieth century - he brought something undeniably new to fiction

A classic espionage thriller from master storyteller Graham Greene 
 
 ‘One of the most important British writers of the twentieth century - he brought something undeniably new to fiction’ Daily Telegraph 
 
 Carleton Myatt meets Coral Musker, a naïve English chorus girl, aboard the Orient Express as it heads across Europe to Constantinople. As their relationship develops, they find themselves caught up in the fates of the other passengers and drawn into a web of espionage, murder and lies. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Brighton Rock

Gripping, terrifying, an unputdownable read - Greene's iconic tale of the razor-wielding Pinkie.

A gangland murder draws a seaside town into fear and faith. 
 
Seventeen-year-old Pinkie Brown is a murderer. Sharp, devout, and certain of his own righteousness, he believes he can outwit both the police and the consequences of his actions. 
 
When Ida Arnold begins questioning the circumstances of a suspicious death, she sets out to uncover the truth behind it. Meanwhile Rose, young and trusting, binds herself to Pinkie in an act of love that pulls her further into danger. 
 
Set in 1930s Brighton, this literary crime novel about a teenage gangster examines sin, faith, and moral blindness. Greene’s spare prose strips violence of glamour, revealing instead the emptiness at its core. 
 
'I read Brighton Rock when I was about thirteen. One of the first lessons I took from it was that a serious novel could be an exciting novel - that the novel of adventure could also be the novel of ideas' Ian McEwan

The most ingenious, inventive and exciting of our novelists... A master of storytelling

I read Brighton Rock when I was about thirteen. One of the first lessons I took from it was that a serious novel could be an exciting novel - that the novel of adventure could also be the novel of ideas

Graham Greene

Graham Greene’s iconic thriller – a shocking tale of espionage and deceit, told from amongst the smouldering ruins of war-torn Europe. 
 
Rollo Martins, a second-rate novelist, arrives penniless in post-war Vienna to visit his friend and hero, Harry Lime. But Harry has died in suspicious circumstances, and the police are closing in on his associates... 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

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Graham Greene

Books by Graham Greene

Series by Graham Greene

Brief Encounters52 Books

The Little Train1 Book

Articles featuring Graham Greene

Classic books all teens should own

The greatest spy thrillers in literature

Where to start with Graham Greene’s books

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