If a Graham Greene fan wanted to visit all the places Greene passed through in his lifetime, that fan would need to be an intrepid traveler indeed. Destinations would have to include Liberia, Sierra Leone, Vietnam, Mexico, Haiti, Nicaragua, Russia, Poland, and Sweden, among others. Greene spent a good part of his adult life criss-crossing the planet, writing as he went, and quit only when he was simply too old to do it anymore.

Born in 1904 in Hertfordshire, England, Graham Greene was one of six children. His father was headmaster of the boarding school he attended as a boy, and perhaps partly because of this he was teased by his fellow students and became very unhappy, attempting suicide several times in his teens. After being treated for depression in London, he went to college and turned to writing, working for the student paper and publishing a book of poems the year he graduated (1925). After graduation he took a job as an editor at a local paper, and soon went on to become an editor at The Times in London. In 1927 he married Vivien Dayrell-Browning, a woman who was primarily responsible for his conversion to the Catholic faith in 1926. The couple had two children.

Greene worked at The Times until the success of his first publication, The Man Within (1929), led him to quit his job and focus on his writing. His next two books were not as successful, but Stamboul Train (1934) brought him the critical acclaim he desired. Greeneâ??s travels began soon thereafter, and his trips were often incorporated into his writing, mostly famously in The Power and the Glory (following a trip to Mexico). Greene was a prolific writer, and published over 25 novels, including Brighton Rock (1938), The End of the Affair (1951), and The Quiet American (1955). He also wrote the screenplay for The Third Man (1950), several plays, and was an active and well-respected film reviewer throughout his life.

Greene spent his final years in Antibes, France and then Vevey, Switzerland. He died in 1991, at age 86.

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Articles About Greene, Graham

Graham Greene's Vietnam - The Quiet American

November 27, 2007

The Quiet American by Graham Greene ought to be required reading for anyone planning a visit to Vietnam. For more than forty years, this prophetic portrait of the failing days of French colonial rule has been alternately praised and reviled by critics, but still stands as the definitive, though fictionalized account of the terrible confrontation between moral dissipation and dangerous naivete that plagued this tropical nation for so many decades. Vietnam has come a long way from those troubled times.