Graham Greene

"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...

A masterful. brilliantly constructed novel of love and chaos in 1950s Vietnam (Zadie Smith, The Guardian ). It's 1955 and British journalist Thomas Fowler has been in Vietnam for two years covering the insurgency against French colonial rule. But it's not just a political tangle that's kept him tethered to the country. There's also his lover, Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman who clings to Fowler for protection. Then comes Alden Pyle, an idealistic...

A hapless salesman in Cuba is recruited into Cold War spy games in Greene's classic "comical, satirical, atmospherical" novel ( The Daily Telegraph ). James Wormold, a cash-strapped vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana, finds the answer to his prayers when British Intelligence offers him a lucrative job as an undercover agent. To keep the checks coming, Wormold must at least pretend to know what he's doing. Soon, he's apparently deciphering incomprehensible...

In postwar London, a boy is drawn into a labyrinth of personal betrayals, intrigue, love, and revolution: "In short, a tremendous yarn" (Paul Theroux). On his twelfth birthday, Victor Baxter is spirited away from boarding school by a stranger known only as the Captain who claims to have won him in a backgammon game with the boy's diabolical father. Settling into a new life in a dire London flat, Victor becomes the willing ward of his mysterious abductor...

With his sheer mastery of narrative, the British novelist takes a detour into the uncanny and wondrously absurd in these compelling stories ( The Guardian ). An ambitious departure for an author renowned for his realism, this collection of short fiction collectively ... [engages] in a reconnaissance through the dustier reaches of man's experience with [the] spectres of doubt, defeat, failure and paradox ( Kirkus Reviews ). In Under the Garden, William...

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...

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...

The British author embarks on an awe-inspiring trek through 1930s West Africa in " one of the best travel books [of the twentieth] century " ( The Independent ). When Graham Greene left Liverpool in 1935 for what was then an Africa unmarked by colonization, it was to leave the known transgressions of his own civilization behind for those unknown. First by cargo ship, then by train and truck through Sierra Leone, and finally on foot, Greene embarked...

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...

An "adventurous ... intelligent ... ingenious" novel of crime and punishment in pre-World War II London (V. S. Pritchett). During a demonstration in Hyde Park, Communist bus driver Jim Drover acts on instinct to protect his wife by stabbing to death the policeman set to strike her down. Sentenced to hang -- whether as a martyr, tool, or murderer -- Drover accepts his lot, unaware that the ramifications for the crime, and the battle for his reprieve,...