Book description
To Graham Greene, 'Africa will always be the Africa of the Victorian
atlas, the blank unexplored continent the shape of the human heart.' IN
SEARCH OF A CHARACTER contains two African notebooks: Congo Journal,
which records Graham Greene's travels in 1959, and his stay at the Yonda
leper colony in the jungle which inspired the story for A Burnt-Out
Case. Convoy to West Africa describes Greene's voyage in a cargo boat
during the Second World War, from Liverpool to Freetown, Sierra Leone,
the setting for THE HEART OF THE MATTER.
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. Graham Greene died in April 1991.
