Reflections
-
- £6.99
-
- £6.99
Publisher Description
UPDATED AND EDITED WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY JUDITH ADAMSON
Whether reporting from the London cinema, Cotswolds villages, second-hand bookshops, war zones or political trouble spots, Graham Greene's novelistic gifts for detail, drama and compassionate curiosity provide unique and resonant insights into his life and times. To know war on any continent, read ‘A Memory of Indo-China’; to glimpse high political chicanery, read ‘The Great Spectacular’; to feel the flush and aftermath of revolutionary change, take up his pieces about Cuba. Reflections provides an extraordinary mirror on the twentienth century from one of its greatest observers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Like the recent Last Stories , this is a collection of previously uncollected material--in this case essays, reviews and travel pieces from the entire length of the author's 60-year writing career (the earliest written while he was still at Oxford). The material varies considerably in interest and quality, though it is surprising to observe that from the start the eye for the telling, often sordid detail was at work, the knack for establishing atmosphere in a deft stroke or two. The travel pieces are superbly crafted essays, combining politics and sociology seamlessly with history and scenery: on Indo-China before the Vietnam War, on old and new Cuba, on Haiti, Paraguay, a haunting evocation of Goa. Greene also wrote passionately and despairingly on the possibilities--and mostly failed promise--of film; a movie critic in the '30s, he was one of the best. A collection like this does not add to his reputation but is interesting, nonetheless, for the consistency of his dour vision.
