Greene, Graham (Henry Graham Greene), 1904–91, English novelist and playwright. Although most of his works combine elements of the detective story, the spy thriller, and the psychological drama, his novels are essentially parables of the damned. Greene's heroes realize their sins and achieve salvation only through great pain and soul-searching agony. A Roman Catholic convert, he was intensely concerned with the moral problems of humans in relation to God. Some of his 26 novels have been ranked as thrillers, and Greene himself called such works as Stamboul Train (1932; U.S. title, Orient Express) and The Ministry of Fear (1943) "entertainments" to distinguish them from his more serious efforts. His major works, which include Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948), and The End of the Affair (1951), mark him as a novelist of high distinction.

Greene was a superb journalist, a sometime British spy, and a world traveler. Many of his novels are set in locations with which he had personal experience, sites often of topical journalistic interest: The Quiet American (1955) a prescient account of early American involvement in Vietnam; Our Man in Havana (1958), set in Cuba; A Burnt-Out Case (1961), in the Belgian Congo just before its independence; The Comedians (1966), in François Duvalier's Haiti; and The Captain and the Enemy (1980), in Panama. His fine sense of comedy is displayed in the short-story collection May We Borrow Your Husband? (1967) and the novel Travels with My Aunt (1969). Greene also wrote several plays, including The Living Room (1953) and The Potting Shed (1957), both thinly disguised religious dramas, and The Complaisant Lover (1959), a witty and intelligent play about marriage and infidelity. He is also noted for his short stories, essays, travel books, film criticism, and film scripts, including the mystery melodrama The Third Man (1950).

Bibliography

See his autobiographies, A Sort of Life (1971) and Ways of Escape (1980), and his posthumously published A World of My Own: A Dream Diary (1995); S. Hazzard, Greene on Capri: A Memoir (2000); biographies by M. Shelden (1994) and N. Sherry (3 vol., 1989–2004); studies by H. J. Donaghy (1983), A. A. De Vitis (1986), and J. Meyers, ed. (1990).

Greene, (Henry) Graham

(born Oct. 2, 1904, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, Eng.—died April 3, 1991, Vevey, Switz.) British author. After studying at the University of Oxford, he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1926. Beginning c. 1930 he worked principally as a freelance journalist for several decades, during which he traveled widely. Stamboul Train (1932; also titled Orient Express; film, 1934) was the first of his “entertainments,” thrillers with considerable moral complexity and depth; others included A Gun for Sale (1936; also titled This Gun for Hire; film, 1942), The Confidential Agent (1939; film, 1945), and The Third Man (1949; film, 1949). His finest novels—Brighton Rock (1938; film, 1948), The Power and the Glory (1940; film, 1962), The Heart of the Matter (1948; film, 1954), and The End of the Affair (1951; film, 1999)—all have distinctly religious themes. Several of his novels set in “third-world” nations on the brink of political upheaval were also adapted as films.