The Third Man and The Fallen Idol - Softcover

Greene, Graham

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140032789 ISBN 13: 9780140032789

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1981

Synopsis

In The Third Man, Rollo Martins is invited by a school friend Harry Lime to post-war Vienna, a dreary place at that time occupied by Allied troops. Martins finds that Lime was one of the worst racketeers and has just been killed, but was the death an accident? The truth is more that Martins can bear. In The Fallen Idol, a small boy named Philip is left in a large house with Baines, the butler, and Mrs. Baines, thin and menacing. And soon Philip becomes caught up in other people's secretive lives.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

The Third Man is Greene?s brilliant recreation of post-war Vienna. Rollo Martins, a second-rate novelist, arrives penniless to visit his friend and hero, Harry Lime. But Harry has died in suspicious circumstances, and the police are closing in on his associates.

The Fallen Idol is the chilling story of a small boy caught up in the games adults play. Left in the care of the
butler and his wife while his parents go on holiday, Philip realizes too late the danger of lies and deceit. But the truth is even deadlier.

About the Author

Graham Greene (1904-1991), whose long life nearly spanned the length of the twentieth century, was one of its greatest novelists. Educated at Berkhamsted School and Balliol College, Oxford, he started his career as a sub-editor of The Times of London. He began to attract notice as a novelist with his fourth book, Orient Express, in 1932. In 1935, he trekked across northern Liberia, his first experience in Africa, recounted in A Journey Without Maps (1936). He converted to Catholicism in 1926, an edifying decision, and reported on religious persecution in Mexico in 1938 in The Lawless Roads, which served as a background for his famous The Power and the Glory, one of several “Catholic” novels (Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair). During the war he worked for the British secret service in Sierra Leone; afterward, he began wide-ranging travels as a journalist, which were reflected in novels such as The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, The Comedians, Travels with My Aunt, The Honorary Consul, The Human Factor, Monsignor Quixote, and The Captain and the Enemy. In addition to his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, two books of autobiography—A Sort of Life and Ways of Escape—two biographies, and four books for children. He also contributed hundreds of essays and film and book reviews to The Spectator and other journals, many of which appear in the late collection Reflections. Most of his novels have been filmed, including The Third Man, which the author first wrote as a film treatment. Graham Greene was named Companion of Honour and received the Order of Merit among numerous other awards.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1981
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140032789
• ISBN 13: 9780140032789
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 160