Modern english literature

Graham Greene (1904 - 1991)

• A great-nephew of Robert Louis Stevenson, Greene was the son of the headmaster of a school in Hertfordshire. Graham attended his fathers school, studied at the Oxford University. In the year of graduation (1925) he published a book of poetry “Babbling April”. During the next two years he married, became a journalist (eventually joined the staff of the London “Times” and converted to Roman Catholicism. After the publication of his first novel “The Man Within”(1929) he left “the Times” and became a free-lance writer and reviewer. He had a versatile talent being equally good as a novelist, essayist, short-stories writer and a playwright.

Two important influences on Greene’s writing have been his Catholicism and the cinema. As a Catholic, Greene reflects on his religious convictions and probes the nature of good and evil in both the personal and doctrinal level. Greene has done excellent work both as a film critic and as a screenwriter.

• Two important influences on Greene’s writing have been his Catholicism and the cinema. As a Catholic, Greene reflects on his religious convictions and probes the nature of good and evil in both the personal and doctrinal level. Greene has done excellent work both as a film critic and as a screenwriter.
• Greene is known as the author of two genres: psychological detective novels or “entertainments”, and “serious novels”, as he called them. Both novels and entertainments are marked by careful plotting and charac-terization, but in the “serious novels” the inner world of the characters is more complex and the psychological analysis becomes deeper. The “entertainments” are, for the most part, literary thrillers, such as “A Gun for Sale” (1936), “The Ministry of Fear (1943), and “The Third Man” (1949). The novels belonging to the “serious” category are: “The Man Within” (1929), “It’s a Battlefield (1934), ”England Made Me” (1935), “Brighton Rock” (1938), “The Power and the Glory”(1940), “The Heart of the Matter”(1948), “The End of the Affair”(1951), “The Quiet American” (1955), “A Burnt-Out Case” (1961), “The Comedians” (1966).