The Last Word and Other Stories »

Known for his espionage thrillers set in exotic locales, Graham Greene is the writer who launched a thousand travel journalists. But although Greene produced some unabashedly commercial works -- he called them "entertainments," to distinguish them from his novels -- even his escapist fiction is rooted in the gritty realities he encountered around the globe.

These twelve stories, dating from 1923 to 1989, represent the quintessential Graham Greene. Rich in gallows humor, they have the power both to move and to entertain. Included here are such famous stories as "The Last Word", "The News in English", "The Lieutenant Died Last", and "The Lottery Ticket", as well as his masterly detective story "Murder for the Wrong Reason".

Herbert Mitgang

Here in microcosm are echoes of his major novels, but all the stories stand on their own....Mr. Greene is willing to venture, possibly to lecture and offend, and yet to reveal himself as an author who hasn't quite given up on the remote chance for a more humane world. -- New York Times