Greene, Graham

❮ Poetry & Prose ❮ Books / People

Lest we forget, Alec Guinness once said of Graham Greene, “A great writer who spoke brilliantly to a whole generation. Prophet-like.”

Born
2 October 1904
Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England

Died 3 April 1991 (aged 86)
Vevey, Switzerland

British writer Graham Greene here seated in an armchair reading a book in front of his library (Antibes, France, April 17, 1978).

Graham Greene, was an English novelist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th c. (he was shortlisted, in 1966 and 1967, for the Nobel Prize for Literature). Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious novels, and of thrillers. Generally speaking, Greene explored the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world.

The Quiet American

Into the intrigue and violence of 1950s Indo-China comes CIA agent Alden Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy through a mysterious ‘Third Force’. As his naive optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, finds it hard to stand aside and watch. But even as he intervenes he wonders why: for the greater good, or something altogether more complicated? This is one of the BBC’s “100 Novels That Shaped Our World.” The novelist Ian McEwan says, “The novel that I love the most is The Quiet American.”

❝
I measured love by the extent of my jealousy.
❞
— Graham Greene (The End of the Affair)

“I measured love by the extent of my jealousy.”

“Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel; sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.”

**“When we are not sure, we are alive.”**

❝
Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel; sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.
❞
— Graham Greene (The End of the Affair)

ENGLISH LIT.

English style guide
The English language
Booker / “Nobel” / Pulitzer
Elizabethan era / “Love letters”
“Definitive List of Literary Works”
French in English / Latin in English
Anthology / Chronology / Terminology
Phrases & idioms with their etymologies
Literary criticism: analysing poetry & prose
Glossary of works, writers and literary devices:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
📙 Books 📕 Poets 📗 Thinkers 📘 Writers

face-with-stuck-out-tongue-and-winking-eye

READING LISTS ETC.

WRITERS

POETS

PHILOSOPHERS

PSYCHOLOGISTS

POLITICAL FIGURES

BOOKS OF FICTION ^⅋

NON-FICTION BOOKS ^⅋

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) was a French writer, philosopher and political activist. She is known for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. — The Second Sex

A Room of one's own — A Room of One’s Own

War and Peace is the 1869 novel by Russian author Leo Tolstoy. It is regarded as a classic of world literature. (The novel chronicles the French invasion of Russia and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society through the stories of five Russian aristocratic families.) Tolstoy said War and Peace is "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle." Tolstoy regarded Anna Karenina as his first true novel. — War and Peace

The Trial, by Franz Kafka (1914 [1925]) -- A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis--an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life--including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door--becomes increasingly unpredictable. As K. tries to gain control, he succeeds only in accelerating his own excruciating downward spiral. — The Trial

Brave New World (1932) is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley. Set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist (one Bernard Marx). In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World at number five on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th c. — Brave New World

Beloved is a 1987 novel by the late American writer Toni Morrison. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 and, in a survey of writers and literary critics compiled by The New York Times, it was ranked the best work of American fiction from 1981 to 2006. The work, set after the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865, was inspired by the life of Margaret Garner, an African American who escaped slavery by crossing the Ohio River to Ohio, a free state. Garner was subsequently captured and decided to kill her infant daughter rather than have her taken into slavery. — Beloved

The Prophet “If you love somebody, let them go, if they don’t return, they were never yours.”	The Essential Rumi “Lovers do not finally meet somewhere. They are in each other all along.”
Ways of Escape: a journey of sorts A short excerpt from the book: “I was dead, deader than dead because, I was still alive.”	The Significance of Literature A podcast series that chronologically charts the key works of poetry and prose.