peteg's blog - noise - books - 2014 06 07 Greene OrientExpress

Graham Greene: Orient Express (aka Stamboul Train)

Sat, Jun 07, 2014./noise/books | Link

Once again I found myself in the Chicago Public Library without my laptop, and so had to wrack my brains for authors worth reading. I think I forswore Greene a few months/years back after reading his post-conversion The Power and the Glory (or thereabouts). This one is early, 1932, and entirely cinematic; so much reads as instructions to a director. I enjoyed it but things kind of trail off when they should bite. He keenly draws a Jewish character and hopefully observes that the mindless discrimination he encounters is on the way out in Europe. Similarly the treatment of communism is of the (interwar) times.