Graham Greene: A Life in Letters - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393066428 ISBN 13: 9780393066425

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008

Synopsis

This absorbing autobiography in letters offers a remarkable window into the life of one of the greatest novelists of our time. "The Best Book of the Year." --David Lodge, The Guardian [UK]

One of the undisputed masters of twentieth-century English prose, Graham Greene (1904-1991) wrote tens of thousands of personal letters. This exemplary volume presents a new and engrossing account of his life constructed out of his own words. Impeccably edited by scholar Richard Greene, the letters--including many unavailable even to his official biographer--give a new perspective on a life that combined literary achievement, political action, espionage, travel, and romantic entanglement. The letters describe his travels in such places as Mexico, Vietnam, and Cuba, where he observed the struggles of mankind with a compassionate and truthful eye. Letters to friends such as Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark offer a glimpse into the literary culture in which he wrote, while others reveal the agonies of his heart. The sheer range of experience contained in Greene's correspondence defies comparison. 8 pages

About this title

About the Author:

Richard Greene (no relation) was educated at Oxford University and is now an associate professor at the University of Toronto. His next book is a biography of British poet Edith Sitwell. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

From Publishers Weekly:

Richard Greene (an associate professor at the University of Toronto and no relation of the novelist's) provides an incisive introduction, narrative and annotations to his selection of Graham Greene's letters from 1921 to 1991, which appear together for the first time. Perennially shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature but never a recipient, Greene is presented in these letters through the five main preoccupations of his life: Roman Catholicism, politics, love, travel and, certainly not least, the processes of writing and publishing. As a publisher at Eyre & Spottiswoode, and as an author in disputes with Heinemann's and Viking ("Would rather change publisher than title"), Greene gained an unusually rounded view of the business side of his profession. In love and through several intense and long-lasting affairs, Greene remains something of a tortured exhibitionist. His writing career led to correspondence with a range of authors and personalities, including Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark, Kurt Vonnegut, Ralph Richardson, Michael Korda, Anthony Burgess, the future Pope Paul VI and radical Swiss theologian Hans Küng. Points of travel famously include such hot spots as Vietnam, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Cuba and Israel. In all, this well-thought-out collection newly reveals a remarkable activist-writer. 8 pages of illus. (Dec.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0393066428
• ISBN 13: 9780393066425
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 480
• Editor: Greene Richard