The Man Within

Description

Graham Greene's first novel to be published represented for the author 'one sentimental gesture towards his won past, the period of ambition and hope'. It 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. She 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. Greene began writing The Man Within at the age of twenty-one. A remarkable achievement, it is also a foretaste of the more mature novels where religion struggles against cynicism and the individual battles against the indifferent forces of a hostile world.

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.

Full of treasures for Greene enthusiasts: a complex web of betrayal and deceit and a tormented central character * Observer * 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 * Guardian * 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 -- John Le Carre 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 -- John Berger One of our greatest authors... For experience of a whole century he was the man within * Independent *