The Human Imperative: A Study of the Novels of Graham Greene

by Stephen K. Land

While many literary studies today focus only on a single work by an author, or on a single aspect of that author's work, Stephen Land's study considers Graham Greene's entire output as a coherent whole. Analyzing Greene's novels thematically, as well as in terms of the writer's development from "entertainments" to the more ambitious, Land traces common threads of meaning through a chronological examination of Greene's work, and compares characters and character types that span the range of stories.
What emerges is a critical portrait of one of the twentieth century's major novelists as continually concerned with issues of love, religion, redemption, personal choice, and the individual's place in society. We find Greene returning again and again to these and other themes, even as his characters become more fleshed out, ethically more complex, and mature in outlook.
Land's broad, systematic reading reveals Greene to be a writer whose work reflects a continual, unfolding engagement with the human condition and an unending attempt to understand and realize the human imperative.

286 pages, Hardcover

First published August 22, 2008