The Confidential Agent: An Entertainment [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Graham Greene (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0851191592 | ISBN-13: 978-0851191591 | Publication Date: March 11, 1982 | Edition: Large type edition

In a small continental country civil war is raging. Once a lecturer in medieval French, now a confidential agent, D is a scarred stranger in a seemingly casual England, sent on a mission to buy coal at any price. Initially, this seems to be a matter of straightforward negotiation, but soon, implicated in murder, accused of possessing false documents and theft, held responsible for the death of a young woman, D becomes a hunted man, tormented by allegiances, doubts and the love of others.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Chivers Press; Large type edition edition (March 11, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0851191592
• ISBN-13: 978-0851191591
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,739,273 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "I don't think I shall ever feel anything again except fear", July 29, 2004

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Confidential Agent: An Entertainment (Paperback)

When D., an agent from an unnamed country, presumably Spain, arrives in England on a mission to buy coal for his side in a civil war, he discovers that L., an agent for the other side, is also there for the same reason. Coal is now as valuable in his country as gold, and whoever obtains it is likely to win the war. With ambassadors, government officials, and agents constantly changing sides and selling each other out, D. is unable to trust anyone. Formerly a professor of medieval French and an expert in the Song of Roland, D.'s world has been shattered. In the past two years, his wife has been killed, and he's been buried alive, tortured, and jailed. Soon he meets an attractive, young Englishwoman, is implicated in the deaths of two people, has his credentials stolen, and ends up on the run from both the police and his own compatriots.

Published in 1939, this is one of Greene's most exciting "entertainments." A thriller of the first order, this novel also deals with big themes, not religious conflicts of his major novels, but the idea of justice, as a good man finds himself hunted for his political allegiances and learns that his own survival and that of his country depend upon his willingness to kill his enemies. A formal, courtly scholar, D. has discovered war is not glamorous, as it is in the Song of Roland, that innocent people are killed, and that survival is not a matter of divine intervention as much as it is a result of forethought and cleverness.

Told entirely from D.'s perspective, presumably the "right" perspective in Greene's mind, the reader sees D. as less heroic than he might be and the villains as less villainous. D. is well developed and realistic, however, and he wrestles with issues as his readers might. Set just before World War II, Greene here foreshadows some of the themes with which he struggles in his more contemplative novels--the nature of good and evil, man's constant struggle with guilt, the trauma of betrayal, and the fear of failure. Though there is a female love interest, Rose Cullen, the daughter of Lord Benditch, who owns the coal mines, she is neither plausible nor sufficiently thoughtful to add to the themes here. Ironies abound, and while the novel lacks the light touch and humor which make a novel like Our Man in Havana so successful, this is an exciting story which casts light on important ideas. Mary Whipple

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, September 4, 2008

By 

Jack Cade (Mass. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Confidential Agent (Hardcover)

Graham Greene wrote this book in I think 1939--it is one of his best. The backdrop is The Spanish Civil War (though never mentioned) an agent for the Spanish Republic comes to England to try and buy coal--I won't giveaway the plot. Greene uses his "thriller" to explore the questions of loyalty betrayal--faith commitment revenge--a whole series of moral problems that preoccupied him the rest of his life. Though Greene is a man of the Left there are no slogans or pat answers in thi book.
He wrote it in 6 weeks while working on Brighton Rock--quite something!

5.0 out of 5 stars A highbrow thriller and classic Greene, January 13, 2008

By 

HORAK (Zug, Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Confidential Agent (Paperback)

Here is what the author says about his novel:
"`The Confidential Agent' was written in six weeks in 1938 after my return from Mexico. The Spanish Civil War furnished the background...I was struggling then through `The Power and the Glory', but there was no money in the book as far as I could foresee. Certainly my wife and two children would not be able to live on one unsaleable book...so I determined to write another "entertainment" as quickly as possible in the mornings, while I ground on slowly with `The Power and the Glory' in the afternoons.
The opening scene between two rival agents on the cross-channel steamer--I called them D. and L. because I did not wish to localize their conflict--was all I had in mind, and a certain vague ambition to create something legendary out of a contemporary thriller: the hunted man who becomes in turn the hunter, the peaceful man who turns at bay, the man who has learned to love justice by suffering injustice. But what the legend was to be about in modern terms I had no idea.
I fell back for the first and last time in my life on Benzedrine. For six weeks I started each day with a tablet, and renewed the dose at midday. Each day I sat down to work with no idea of what turn the plot might take and each morning I wrote, with the automatism of a planchette, two thousand words instead of my usual stint of five hundred words. In the afternoons `The Power and the Glory' proceeded towards its end at the same leaden pace, unaffected by the sprightly young thing who was so quickly overtaking it.
`The Confidential Agent' is one of the few books of mine which I have cared to reread--perhaps because it is not really one of mine. It was as though I were ghosting for another man. D., the chivalrous agent and professor of Romance literature, is not really one of my characters, nor is Forbes, born Furtstein, the equally chivalrous lover. The book moved rapidly because I was not struggling with my own technical problems: I was to all intents ghosting a novel by an old writer who was to die a little before the studio in which I had worked was blown out of existence. All I can say as excuse, and in gratitude to an honoured shade, is that `The Confidential Agent' is a better than Ford Madox Ford wrote himself when he attempted the genre in `Vive Le Roy'".
From `Ways of Escape', pp.69-71