Friday, January 13, 2012

Four essential Graham Greene novels

Pico Iyer's new memoir is The Man Within My Head.

He named his four favorite Graham Greene novels for The Daily Beast. One title on the list:
The End of the Affair

Greene’s most personal novel was called “one of the best, most true and moving novels of my time,” by William Faulkner, no less. Told, unusually for Greene, in the first person, it’s a characteristically raw, intimate and unsparing account of an adulterous affair in which—a typical Greene touch—God seems to play the cuckold, and the husband and husband’s rival end up living together as best friends.
Read about another novel on the list.

The End of the Affair also appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best explosions in literature, ten of the best umbrellas in literature, ten of the best novels about novelists, and ten of the best priests in literature, and Douglas Kennedy's top ten list of books about grief.

--Marshal Zeringue