GRAHAM GREENE (1904-1991), whose long life nearly spanned
the length of the twentieth century, was one of its greatest
novelists. Educated
at Berkhamsted School and Balliol College, Oxford,
he started his career as a sub-editor of
the London Times. He began to attract notice as a
novelist with his fourth book, Orient Express, in 1932.
In 1935, he trekked across northern Liberia, his first
experience in Africa, told in A Journey Without
Maps (1936). He converted to Catholicism in 1926, an edifying
decision, and reported on religious persecution
in Mexico in 1938 in The Lawless Roads, which
served as a background for his famous The Power and the Glory,
one of several “Catholic” novels (Brighton Rock, The
Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair). During the
war he worked for the British secret service in Sierra Leone;
afterward, he began wide-ranging travels as a journalist, which
were reflected in novels such as The Quiet American, Our
Man in Havana, The Comedians, Travels with My
Aunt, The Honorary Consul, The Human
Factor, Monsignor Quixote, and The Captain and the
Enemy. As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several
collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, two
books of autobiography, A Sort of Life and Ways of
Escape, two biographies, and four books for children. He also
contributed hundreds of essays and film and book reviews
to The Spectator and other journals, many of which appear
in the late collection Reflections. Most of his novels
have been filmed, including The Third Man, which the author
first wrote as a film treatment. Graham Greene was named Companion
of Honour and received the Order of Merit among numerous other
awards.
JOHN UPDIKE (1932-2009) was the author of more than
sixty books, including collections of short stories, poems, and
criticism. His novels have been honored with the Pulitzer Prize
(twice), the National Book Award, and the Howells Medal of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters. Hugging the Shore, an
earlier collection of essays and reviews, received the National
Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. He died in January 2009.
Named one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century
by Time magazine
“Greene’s masterpiece . . . The energy and grandeur of his finest
novel derive from the . . . will toward compassion. . . . It
succeeds . . . resoundingly.” —John Updike, from the
Introduction
“Brilliant . . . a splendid achievement.” —The
Atlantic Monthly
“[Greene] captured the conscience of the twentieth century like no
other.” —William Golding, Nobel Prize–winning author of Lord
of the Flies
“No serious writer of [the twentieth] century has more thoroughly
invaded and shaped the public imagination as did Graham Greene.”
—Time
“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
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