Author Guide · Literary Fiction & Thrillers
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For most of his career Graham Greene sorted his own fiction into two piles. Thrillers such as Stamboul Train and Our Man in Havana he called “entertainments”; books such as The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter were “novels”. Readers never kept to the line, and by the 1970s neither did he. Born in Berkhamsted in 1904, he converted to Catholicism at 21, worked for MI6 during the Second World War under Kim Philby, and travelled to Mexico, West Africa, Vietnam, the Congo and Haiti for the settings of his books. More than a dozen were filmed, and he wrote the screenplay for The Third Man. This guide covers his thirteen key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 13 key books · 1932–1978 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Graham Greene published 26 novels and novellas between 1929 and 1988. The best known are Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The End of the Affair (1951) and The Quiet American (1955). Start with The Quiet American: it is short, it moves like a thriller, and it carries the moral weight of his serious novels.
Where to Start with Graham Greene
If you want the best way in
→ The Quiet American (1955) — love and politics in 1950s Saigon.
If you want his Catholic novels
→ The Power and the Glory (1940) — a hunted priest in Mexico.
If you want a crime novel
→ Brighton Rock (1938) — a teenage gangster in 1930s Brighton.
If you want him at his funniest
→ Our Man in Havana (1958) — a vacuum-cleaner salesman turned spy.
13 Graham Greene Books, in Order
Stamboul Train
Passengers on the Orient Express from Ostend to Istanbul over three days: a currant trader, a sick chorus girl, a communist doctor travelling on a forged passport, a journalist chasing his story, and a thief. The first book he called an “entertainment” and his first commercial success; it was published in the United States as Orient Express and filmed in 1934.
Brighton Rock
Pinkie Brown, a seventeen-year-old gang leader in Brighton, kills a man and marries Rose, a young waitress, so that she cannot testify against him, while Ida Arnold, a cheerful stranger, pursues him for the dead man’s sake. Pinkie and Rose are both Catholics. Its first edition, in the United States, was subtitled “An Entertainment”. It was filmed with Richard Attenborough as Pinkie, from Greene’s own screenplay, and again in 2010.
The Power and the Glory
In a Mexican state where the Catholic Church has been outlawed, an unnamed “whisky priest”, a drinker who has fathered a child, is the last priest still at large, hunted by an idealistic police lieutenant. Greene drew on his own journey through Mexico in 1938, described in The Lawless Roads. It won the Hawthornden Prize in 1941.
The Heart of the Matter
Major Scobie, a deputy police commissioner in a British West African colony during the Second World War, is an honest man undone by pity: for his unhappy wife, for a young widow he begins an affair with, and finally for God. As a Catholic he believes the way out he chooses is damnation. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
The Third Man
Rollo Martins, a writer of westerns, arrives in occupied Vienna to find that his friend Harry Lime has died, then learns that Lime was running a racket in diluted penicillin. Greene wrote the story as groundwork for Carol Reed’s 1949 film, for which he wrote the screenplay, and published it afterwards.
The End of the Affair
Maurice Bendrix, a novelist, looks back on his wartime affair with Sarah Miles, the wife of a civil servant, which she broke off without explanation after a bomb fell on his flat in the Blitz. He hires a private detective and finds her diary. Greene dedicated it to Catherine Walston, with whom he had a long affair. It was filmed in 1955 and again in 1999 by Neil Jordan.
The Quiet American
In Saigon in the early 1950s, during the French war in Indochina, Thomas Fowler, a cynical British reporter, watches Alden Pyle, a young American aid worker with theories about a “Third Force”, take his Vietnamese lover Phuong and help bring about a bombing in the city. It was filmed in 1958, with a reversed ending that angered Greene, and again in 2002.
Our Man in Havana
Jim Wormold, an English vacuum-cleaner salesman in pre-revolutionary Havana who needs money for his daughter, is recruited by British intelligence and invents a network of agents, sending drawings of vacuum-cleaner parts to London as plans for secret weapons. Greene drew on his own MI6 years. Carol Reed filmed it in 1959.
A Burnt-Out Case
Querry, a famous architect who has lost all belief and feeling, arrives at a leper colony run by priests deep in the Belgian Congo, wanting only to disappear. The title is the term for a leper whose disease has run its course. Greene stayed at a leprosy hospital in the Congo to research it.
The Comedians
Brown, an English hotel owner, returns to Port-au-Prince under the dictatorship of Papa Doc Duvalier and his Tontons Macoutes, along with an innocent American couple and the dubious “Major” Jones. Greene wrote the screenplay for the 1967 film with Richard Burton and Alec Guinness.
Travels with My Aunt
Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager who grows dahlias, meets his elderly Aunt Augusta at his mother’s funeral and is drawn into her travels to Paris, Istanbul and Paraguay, among smugglers and old lovers. It was marketed as a novel but reads as one of his lightest books, a sign of the old division breaking down.
The Honorary Consul
In a small town in northern Argentina, revolutionaries kidnap Charley Fortnum, a drunken British honorary consul, by mistake for the American ambassador. Eduardo Plarr, a doctor who is having an affair with Fortnum’s wife, is drawn in, along with a former priest leading the kidnappers. It was filmed in 1983 with Richard Gere and Michael Caine.
The Human Factor
Maurice Castle, a quiet officer in the African section of British intelligence, is passing secrets to the Soviets out of gratitude to the communists who helped his Black South African wife Sarah escape apartheid. When the service hunts for a leak, a colleague is suspected instead. Otto Preminger filmed it in 1979 from a Tom Stoppard script.
In What Order to Read Graham Greene
None of Greene’s novels are connected, so you can read them in any order. The useful guide is his own old division: the “entertainments” (Stamboul Train, The Third Man, Our Man in Havana) are faster and lighter; the four so-called Catholic novels (Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair) are his most searching; the later books take his political travels to Vietnam, Haiti and Latin America.
Start with The Quiet American, which sits between the two kinds. Then choose: The Power and the Glory if you want the serious Greene, Our Man in Havana if you want the comic one. Read The Human Factor after one of the earlier spy books.
A reading path
1. The Quiet American (1955)
2. Brighton Rock (1938)
3. The Power and the Glory (1940)
4. The End of the Affair (1951)
5. Our Man in Havana (1958)
Everything Else Graham Greene Published
Beyond the 13 key books: 19 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other novels and entertainments
13
13 books · 1929–1988
- 1929The Man Withinhis first novel
- 1930The Name of Actionlater disowned
- 1932Rumour at Nightfalllater disowned
- 1934It’s a Battlefielda novel of 1930s London
- 1935England Made Mea novel set in Stockholm
- 1936A Gun for Salean entertainment, filmed as This Gun for Hire (1942)
- 1939The Confidential Agentan entertainment
- 1943The Ministry of Fearan entertainment, filmed by Fritz Lang
- 1955Loser Takes Allan entertainment
- 1980Doctor Fischer of Genevaa short late novel
- 1982Monsignor Quixotea priest’s journey through Spain
- 1985The Tenth Mana novella written in the 1940s
- 1988The Captain and the Enemyhis last novel
Travel, memoir and nonfiction
6
6 books · 1936–1984
- 1936Journey Without Mapstravels in Liberia
- 1939The Lawless Roadstravels in Mexico
- 1971A Sort of Lifeautobiography
- 1980Ways of Escapememoir of his travels and books
- 1982J’Accuse: The Dark Side of Nicea pamphlet that led to a libel suit he lost
- 1984Getting to Know the Generalon Omar Torrijos of Panama
The years · 1904–1991
Quick facts about Graham Greene
- Known for
- Novels of faith, guilt and betrayal set in the world’s trouble spots, and fast thrillers he called “entertainments”, a mix later summed up as “Greeneland”.
- 1904
- Born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire
- 1926
- Received into the Catholic Church
- 1991
- Dies in Switzerland, aged 86
- Born
- 2 October 1904, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, where his father was a schoolmaster
- Died
- 3 April 1991, Corseaux, near Vevey, Switzerland
- Education
- Balliol College, Oxford (history)
- War work
- MI6, 1941–1944, partly in Sierra Leone; his supervisor was Kim Philby
- Faith
- Converted to Catholicism in 1926; later called himself a “Catholic agnostic”
- Honours
- Hawthornden Prize 1941; James Tait Black Prize 1948; Jerusalem Prize 1981; Order of Merit 1986
- Nobel
- Shortlisted several times, never awarded
The red mark is 1940: The Power and the Glory, his novel of the hunted “whisky priest” in Mexico.
Watch
Graham Greene on The Third Man, 1950
An out-take from the ABC programme Ship’s Reporter, filmed aboard a transatlantic liner in 1950, in which Jack Mangan asks a visibly uneasy Greene about the success of The Third Man.
How Graham Greene Writes: Thrillers with a Conscience
Greene borrowed the machinery of the thriller for almost everything he wrote: a pursuit, a betrayal, a crime, a deadline. Even his most religious novels are built as chases, with the whisky priest pursued by the lieutenant and Pinkie by Ida Arnold. That is why his line between “entertainments” and “novels” was so easy to blur; the difference was in how much the moral question weighed, not in the plot.
His central characters are usually compromised men: a priest who drinks, a policeman who lies, a reporter who betrays a friend, a spy who betrays his country. Catholic belief gives several of the novels their stakes, since sin and damnation are real to the characters, but Greene keeps sympathy with failure and suspicion of the righteous.
He went to the places he wrote about, often when they were dangerous: Liberia, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Vietnam, the Congo, Haiti, Paraguay and Panama. His style is plain and visual, influenced by the cinema he reviewed in the 1930s, and the result is precise local detail that critics came to call “Greeneland”.
Frequently asked questions about Graham Greene’s books
How many books has Graham Greene written?
26 novels and novellas, from The Man Within (1929) to The Captain and the Enemy (1988), two of which he later disowned, plus travel books, memoirs, plays, stories and essays. Thirteen key novels are on this page; the other thirteen are listed below them.
What are Graham Greene’s books in order?
The key novels are Stamboul Train (1932), Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948), The Third Man (1950), The End of the Affair (1951), The Quiet American (1955), Our Man in Havana (1958), A Burnt-Out Case (1960), The Comedians (1966), Travels with My Aunt (1969), The Honorary Consul (1973) and The Human Factor (1978).
Where should I start with Graham Greene?
With The Quiet American (1955). It is short, tense and has both sides of Greene: the thriller and the moral argument. Then try The Power and the Glory or Our Man in Havana.
What is Graham Greene’s most famous book?
Brighton Rock (1938) and The Power and the Glory (1940) are the most famous novels. His most famous single work may be The Third Man, through Carol Reed’s 1949 film, for which he wrote the screenplay.
What is the difference between Greene’s “entertainments” and his novels?
From Stamboul Train (1932) Greene labelled his thrillers “entertainments” and his serious books “novels”. The entertainments include A Gun for Sale, The Confidential Agent, The Ministry of Fear, Loser Takes All and Our Man in Havana; Brighton Rock was subtitled “An Entertainment” in its first, American, edition. The line blurred over time, and in the Collected Edition from 1971 he dropped it.
Which Graham Greene books have been made into films?
Many. Among them: This Gun for Hire (1942, from A Gun for Sale), Ministry of Fear, Brighton Rock, The Fallen Idol (1948), The Third Man (1949), The End of the Affair (1955 and 1999), The Quiet American (1958 and 2002), Our Man in Havana (1959), The Comedians (1967), The Human Factor (1979) and The Honorary Consul (1983).
Was Graham Greene a spy?
He worked for MI6 from 1941 to 1944, recruited through his sister Elisabeth, and was posted to Sierra Leone. His supervisor and friend was Kim Philby, later exposed as a Soviet agent; Greene wrote an introduction to Philby’s memoir and visited him in Moscow in 1987. Our Man in Havana and The Human Factor draw on those years.
Did Graham Greene win the Nobel Prize?
No. He was shortlisted several times between 1950 and 1975 but never won. His honours include the Jerusalem Prize (1981) and the Order of Merit (1986).
Why was Graham Greene sued over Shirley Temple?
In 1937, as film critic of the magazine Night and Day, he reviewed Wee Willie Winkie in terms that suggested the child star Shirley Temple was being presented to appeal to adult men. Twentieth Century Fox sued for libel and in 1938 was awarded £3,500 in damages; the magazine, already in financial trouble, collapsed, and Greene was travelling in Mexico when the case was decided.
Was Graham Greene Catholic?
Yes. He was received into the Catholic Church in 1926, before marrying Vivien Dayrell-Browning, and Catholicism is central to Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair. Later in life he called himself a “Catholic agnostic”.
Footnotes
- Graham Greene — Wikipedia
- Stamboul Train — Wikipedia
- 10 great Graham Greene adaptations — BFI
- Brighton Rock first edition — Ashton Rare Books
- Watch a short, delightfully awkward interview with Graham Greene — CrimeReads
- How Shirley Temple’s lawyers launched Graham Greene’s career — Mental Floss
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.”
— Graham Greene, Brighton Rock (1938), the opening line
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