El english writer Graham Greene he soon excelled in the trade. In his early twenties, he published that first novel that helped him gain an autonomy that facilitated his dedication to literature and travel as necessary complements in his vital way of understanding all narrative will.
In the same way that Frederick forsyth and other writers, Graham Greene worked for the British intelligence services, which ended up providing that addition of argumentative foundations for an extensive and varied bibliography. And I refer to the variety of his work because, beyond his novels about international intrigues with full knowledge of the facts, on each trip and in each new place he visited, Greene blended in perfectly in search of new stories that never ceased to amaze. flow from his profuse imagination.
Decide to read some Graham Greene novel always a point of uncertainty. You can come across a suspenseful story in a distant environment where complementary circumstances take place for the understanding of the convulsive twentieth century, as you find yourself with an almost philosophical disquisition through characters that are always very alive, with their dialogues that serve as a common thread for dilemmas. moral or political of great importance.
In the end, Graham Greene's workFrom its youthful beginnings, it feeds on itself and melts into a magical hybrid. What may seem like your best espionage novel ends up being peppered with that other polemicizing intention that goes far beyond the entertainment narrative. And in the same way, his more "humanistic" novels, so to speak, are assaulted by plots full of that spirited rhythm around an action that is always satisfactory for all types of readers.
Top 3 Recommended Novels by Graham Greene
The reverse of the plot
You think you know your place in the world. The years go by and the comfort zone widens on one side, but stepping on renunciations and abnegations, covering the remote yearnings of youth like the dead under the rug. Only sometimes one reaches the border of that vast comfortable space and is pushed to the other side. Go home or surrender to perdition...
Police Major Henry Scobie and his wife Louise have lived for years with other British officials in a remote West African colony. A suffocating environment that everyone wants to leave, especially Louise. Henry, for his part, is a man of integrity who stoically accepts his situation and his marriage to a woman for whom he feels compassion rather than affection and whom, above all, he tries to make happy. But with the arrival of an unexpected visitor, Henry's strong principles will be put to the test.
Published in 1948 and inspired by the author's own experience in Sierra Leone during the war, this novel quickly became a best seller and is considered one of his best works. The reverse of the plot delves into Greene's favorite themes: the chiaroscuro of human nature, betrayal of others and oneself, failure, faith, sacrifice and love taken to its ultimate consequences. Intense and moving, it is undoubtedly an unforgettable novel.
The power and the glory
Philosophy, action and emotion in its broadest consideration. An explosive mix in which for me it is, without a doubt, the best work of this author.
With 36 years, Greene was already prepared to write that story that would summarize the best of his double literary aspect. A story that moves away from Forsyth and closer to the Chesterton capable of summarizing suspense and that kind of Christian philosophy.
Hand in hand with Father José, we traveled to Mexico in the 30s of the last century. They are not good days for the Christians of a country convinced in the eradication of this religion. The latent Cristero War is equated with the state of a religious like José who is torn between his ecclesiastical mission and the concealment of his sins.
And in that state of contradiction, under that feeling of always being in debt for an old fulfillment of his vows, we find a character on the tightrope over his own morality that exposes the reader to an open-hearted reading.
The third man
Unfortunately, when a film adaptation transcends more than the original novel, that feeling of full authenticity is lost, of creation truly adhered to that creative initiative that transfers to our reading mind each imagined scenario, each conversation, each thought...
It is not a criticism of the movie, which of course was great. Only that phagocytic capacity of the cinema sometimes unnerves me. This novel perfectly encapsulates that black genre immersed in international suspense with a very human proposal around friendship and the change we experience over time.
A story that in the mixture of film and reading memories, plus its natural dark setting of the exit of World War II, becomes a composition in the style of a script by Hitchcock.
Rollo Martins travels to Vienna as soon as the war is over. Europe is now a continent to share among Hitler's liberators. In the city of canals, his friend Harry is waiting for him, and Rollo is especially attracted to the idea of ​​reunion.
But Harry is already dead upon arrival. And everything that he is finding out about his death and those causes in principle unjustifiable for the homicide, appears to an old friend whose life had taken unsuspected paths.
Other recommended books by Graham Greene
The quiet american
Nothing better than a love in distress to finish rounding a novel of intrigue. And if the combination is signed by Greene, the matter takes on another level.
The exotic triangle between Thomas, Alden and Foung becomes at times a fundamental element of the plot. But in principle the story points to another question about the, in those days, unstable situation of the entire Indochinese peninsula, the area from which Foung comes, the girl who completes the vertex with Thomas and Alden.
The political conflicts in Vietnam or Thailand are extrapolated or rather concentrated in detail between the three protagonists. Meanwhile, the author details those conflicts in the area that has been turned into a powder keg where we are faced with the moral baseness of the conquering anxieties of so many actors ...
