7 Stories

THE HEART OF THE MATTER: Scobie is a principled police officer in a war-torn West African state. When he is passed over for promotion he is forced to borrow money to send his despairing wife away on a holiday. In her absence he falls in love with Helen and his life is transformed by the experience.STAMBOUL TRAIL-ORIENT EXPRESS: Published in 1932, this spy thriller unfolds aboard the Orient Express as it crosses Europe from Ostend to Constantinople. Weaving a web of subterfuge, murder and politics along the way, it focuses upon the disturbing relationship between Myatt, the pragmatic Jew, and chorus girl, Coral Musker.A BURNT-OUT CASE: Querry, a world-famous architect, is the victim of an attack of indifference, no longer finding meaning in art or pleasure in life. Arriving anonymously at a Congo leper village, he loses himself in work for the lepers. As he helps the lepers, so he approaches a self-cure.THE THIRD MAN: Two BBC radio dramatisations based on Graham Greene stories. "The Third Man" is a thriller set in Vienna after World War II, and "The Fallen Idol" a psychological drama of personal relationships and a boy's tragic initiation into the world of adult emotions.THE QUIET AMERICAN: While the French Army in Indo-China is grappling with the Vietminh, back at Saigon a young and high-minded American begins to channel economic aid to a "Third Force". As his policies blunder on into bloodshed, the older man finds it impossible to stand aside as an observer.LOSER TAKES ALL: Bertram had no belief in luck. An unsuccessful assistant accountant, he was planning to get married for the second time - quietly. But Dreuther, a director of Bertram's firm, whimsically switches the honeymoon to Monte Carlo. Here Bertram's gambling system works - changing his life.THE POWER AND THE GLORY: How does good spoil, and how can bad be redeemed? In his penetrating novel The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene explores corruption and atonement through a priest and the people he encounters. In the 1930s one Mexican state has outlawed the Church, naming it a source of greed and debauchery. The priests have been rounded up and shot by firing squad--save one, the whisky priest. On the run, and in a blur of alcohol and fear, this outlaw meets a dentist, a banana farmer, and a village woman he knew six years earlier. For a while, he is accompanied by a toothless man--whom he refers to as his Judas and does his best to ditch. Always, an adamant lieutenant is only a few hours behind, determined to liberate his country from the evils of the church.On the verge of reaching a safer region, the whisky priest is repeatedly held back by his vocation, even though he no longer feels fit to perform his rites: "When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist. Wasn't it his duty to stay, even if they despised him, even if they were murdered for his sake? even if they were corrupted by his example?"As his sins and dangers increase, the broken priest comes to confront the nature of piety and love. Still, when he is granted a reprieve, he feels himself sliding into the old arrogance, slipping it on like the black gloves he used to wear. Greene has drawn this man--and all he encounters--vividly and viscerally. He may have said The Power and the Glory was "written to a thesis," but this brilliant theological thriller has far more mysteries--and troubling ideals--than certainties