The Tenth Man - Softcover

"Greene was a past master of the psychological thriller and this was no exception" (Observer)

"A masterpiece - tapped out in the lean, sharp prose that film work taught Greene to perfect" (Sunday Times)

"All of the Greene hallmarks are there: pace, ingenuity, a sense of profundities suggested but never insisted upon" (Penelope Lively Sunday Telegraph)

"Typically full of psychological obsession and tricks of perspective, this short story plays games with the concepts of identity and freedom. Threaded through with paranoiac attempts to be sure of time, life, and death, the story ends with impenetrable paradox; with a tragedy and a travesty, a revenge and a redressal, truth and the ultimate lie" (The Times)

In a prison in Occupied France one in every ten men is to be shot. The prisoners draw lots among themselves - and for rich lawyer Louis Chavel it seems that his whole life has been leading up to an agonising and crucial failure of nerve. Hysterical with panic, fear, and a sense of injustice, he offers to barter everything he owns for someone to take his place.

Graham Greene wrote The Tenth Man in 1944, when he was under a two-year contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and the manuscript lay forgotten in MGM's archives until 1983. It was published two years later with an introduction by the author.