The Life Of Graham Greene Volume Two: 1939-1955 - Hardcover

The book encompasses the most creative phases of Greene's life, when he wrote not only some of his best novels but collaborated with Carol Reed on the films of THE FALLEN IDOL and THE THIRD MAN. Yet this was also the most tumultuous period, seeing Greene's passionate affair with a beautiful and complex American who was then married to a British peer, and the disintegration of his marriage to Vivien. Here, for the first time, is the full story of Greene's activities as a secret agent and the revealing correspondence that shuttled between his one-time boss Kim Philby in Moscow and Sherry in England. In the 1950s Greene was increasingly drawn to areas of conflict in the world - to Kenya, Malaya and to the last days of French Indo-China. But above all, Professor Sherry has succeeded in unlocking Greene's complex character and strange alchemic nature of his native genius.

The second volume of Norman Sherry's three-volume biography reveals Graham Greene, at the height of his powers, as one of the great novelists and most enigmatic figures of this century. Saying he would not entrust his papers and own recorded confidences to a friend, Greene chose Sherry for his biographer, having admired his literary detective work on Joseph Conrad's fiction. The book encompasses the most creative phase of Greene's life, when he wrote not only some of his best novels - among them "The Ministry of Fear", "The Heart of the Matter", "The End of the Affair" and "The Quiet American" - but collaborated with Carol Reed on the films of "The Fallen Idol" and "The Third Man". Yet this was also the most tumultuous period, seeing Greene's passionate affair with a beautiful and complex American who was then married to a British peer, and the disintegration of his marriage to Vivien. Here, for the first time, is the full story of Greene's activities as a secret agent and the revealing correspondence that shuttled between his one-time boss Kim Philby in Moscow and Sherry in England. In the 1950s, Greene was increasingly drawn to areas of conflict in the world - to Kenya, Malaya, and to the last days of French Indo-China.