Graham Greene
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Series
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English
Description
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...
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English
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Description
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 American working in service of the CIA. Devotedly, disastrously patriotic, he believes neither communism nor...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
A whimsical send-up of the spy genre finds vacuum salesman James, recently abandoned by his wife and financially beleaguered by his discriminating daughter, accepting work with the British secret service, where he hides the truth about a lack of information behind a vast network of agents and allegations about a vacuum cleaner's circuit diagram.
Author
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English
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Description
"Graham Greene's masterpiece The Heart of the Matter tells the story of a good man enmeshed in love, intrigue, and evil in a West African coastal town. Scobie is bound by strict integrity to his role as assistant police commissioner and by severe responsibility to his wife, Louise, for whom he cares with a fatal pity. When Scobie falls in love with the young widow Helen, he finds vital passion again yielding to pity, integrity giving way to deceit...
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English
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Set in Brighton among the criminal rabble, the book depicts the tragic career of a 17-year-old boy named Pinkie whose primary ambition is to lead a gang to rival that of the wealthy and established Colleoni. His calamitous childhood and repressed sexuality combine to create a force of evil which is both fascinating and repellent.
Author
Language
English
Description
Set in Mexico, this novel describes the desperate last wanderings of a whisky priest as outlaw in his own state, who, despite a sense of his own worthlessness (he drinks and has fathered a bastard daughter), is determined to continue to function as priest until captured.
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Series
Language
English
Description
Travels with My Aunt is the story of Hanry Pulling, a retired and complacent bank manager who meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta for the first time at what he supposes to be his mother's funeral. She soon persuades Henry to abandon his dull suburban existence to travel her way—winding through Brighton, Paris, Istanbul, and Paraguay. Through Aunt Augusta, one of Greene's greatest comic creations, Henry joins a shiftless, twilight society; mixes...
Author
Publisher
Viking
Pub. Date
1988
Language
English
Description
In Graham Greene's final novel a secretive stranger takes Victor Baxter out of a boarding school much like that of Greene's own youth. The "Captain" changes the boy's name to Jim and brings him to London to serve as a surrogate son to a mysterious woman named Liza. Raised in odd, touching circumstances, Jim never comprehends the enduring relationship between the Captain and Liza, and he struggles to understand what love itself is. Although the novel...
Author
Series
Publisher
Penguin Books
Pub. Date
2006
Language
English
Description
Graham Greene set off in 1935 to discover Liberia, a remote and unfamiliar republic founded for released slaves. Now with a new introduction by Paul Theroux, "Journey Without Maps" is the spellbinding record of Greene's journey. Crossing the red-clay terrain from Sierra Leone to the coast of Grand Bassa with a chain of porters, he came to know one of the few areas of Africa untouched by colonization. Western civilization had not yet impinged on either...
10) A burnt-out case
Author
Publisher
Viking Press
Pub. Date
1961
Language
English
Description
Querry is a world-renowned architect noted for his magnificent churches, each designed not for the glory of God, but for the satisfaction of self. Suddenly infected with indifference, he has abandoned his pursuit of pleasure. Now he has reached the end of desire at the end of the world-a colony of lepers in the remote jungles of Africa.
Here, under the guidance of Doctor Colin, a fellow atheist, Querry's consideration of the sick could be something...
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Series
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English
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Description
In London, just after World War II, a love flourishes between Maurice Bendrix and Sarah Miles. Without explanation Sarah breaks off the affair after a considerably violent episode takes place at Maurice's apartment. This wonderful analysis of what really constitutes love touches on the love of another, the love of self and the love of God.
12) The tenth man
Author
Language
English
Description
An utterly gripping story of a wealthy French lawyer being held prisoner by the Germans during World War II. The lawyer is chosen by the soldiers to die, but instead he makes a cowardly trade for his life--one that he will have to pay for even as a free man.
15) The human factor
Author
Publisher
Simon and Schuster
Pub. Date
c1978
Language
English
Description
Maurice Castle is a high-level operative in the British secret service during the Cold War. He is deeply in love with his African wife, who escaped apartheid South Africa with the help of his communist friend. Despite his misgivings, Castle decides to act as a double agent, passing information to the Soviets to help his in-laws in South Africa. In order to evade detection, he allows his assistant to be wrongly identified as the source of the leaks....
Author
Publisher
Simon and Schuster
Pub. Date
[1973]
Language
English
Description
In a provincial Argentinean town, Charley Fortnum, a British consul with dubious authority and a weakness for drink, is kidnapped by Paraguayan revolutionaries who have mistaken him for the American ambassador. Dr. Eduardo Plarr, a local physician with his own divided loyalties, serves as the negotiator between the rebels and the authorities. These fumbling characters play out an absurd drama of failure, hope, love, and betrayal against a backdrop...