Book description
WITH A FOREWORD BY TIM BUTCHER
In 1935 Graham Greene set off to discover Liberia, a remote and
unfamiliar West African republic founded for released slaves. Crossing
the red-clay terrain from Sierra Leone to the coast at Grand Bassa
with a chain of porters, he came to know one of the few areas of
Africa untouched by Western colonisation.
Graham Greene was born in 1904. On coming down from Balliol
College, Oxford, he worked for four years as sub-editor on The
Times. He established his reputation with his fourth novel,
Stamboul Train. In 1935 he made a journey across Liberia,
described in Journey Without Maps, and on his return was
appointed film critic of the Spectator. In 1926 he had been
received into the Roman Catholic Church and visited Mexico in 1938 to
report on the religious persecution there. As a result he wrote The
Lawless Roads and, later, his famous novel The Power and the
Glory. Brighton Rock was published in 1938 and in 1940 he
became literary editor of the Spectator. The next year he
undertook work for the Foreign Office and was stationed in Sierra
Leone from 1941 to 1943. This later produced the novel The Heart of
the Matter, set in West Africa.
As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections
of short stories, four travel books, six plays, three books of
autobiography - A Sort of Life, Ways of Escape and A
World of My Own (published posthumously) - two of biography and
four books for children. He also contributed hundreds of essays, and
film and book reviews, some of which appear in the collections
Reflections and Mornings in the Dark. Many of his novels
and short stories have been filmed and The Third Man was
written as a film treatment. Graham Greene was a member of the Order
of Merit and a Companion of Honour. He died in April 1991.
