Ever since he first discovered Graham Greene’s work, Pico Iyer has felt a haunting closeness with the English writer. In The Man Within My Head, Iyer follows Greene’s trail from his first novel, The Man Within, to such later classics as The Quiet American, examining Greene’s obsessions, his elusiveness, and his penchant for mystery. The deeper he plunges into this exploration, the more Iyer begins to wonder whether the man within
his head might not be Greene but his own father, or perhaps some more shadowy aspect of himself.
Drawing upon experiences across the globe, from Cuba to Bhutan, and moving, as Greene would, from Sri Lanka in war to intimate moments of introspection, this is the most personal and revelatory book yet from one of our most astute observers of inner journeys and crossing cultures.
While Graham Greene’s work runs the gamut from weighty explorations of human evil like Brighton Rock to genuinely funny farces like Our Man in Havana, there’s just something consistently mesmerizing about his crisp prose and ability to work a moral or philosophical dilemma into even his espionage thriller “entertainments.” Let’s take a look at five things you might not know about the moralist/novelist.
By Pico Iyer