num_pages: 1929
description: In his introduction to these forty stories, Graham Greene says that "the short story for the novelist is often a form of escape—escape from having to live with another character for years on end...." Anyone who so much as opens this collection will be delighted to insist that the author's escape is the reader's good fortune.Including the stories originally published in the separate volumes May We Borrow Your Husband?, A Sense of Reality, and Twenty-One Stories, Collected Stories also prints for the first time in book form three other stories, "The Blessing," "Church Militant," and "Dear Dr. Falkenheim." Mr. Greene's own favorites are four: "I believe I have never written anything better than 'The Destructors,' 'A Chance for Mr. Lever,' 'Under the Garden,' 'Cheap in August.'" Any reader will be free to concur or make his own choice. In any case he is likely to take respectful issue with Mr. Greene's statement that he is "a novelist who has happened to write short stories" and insist that he is the complete master of both forms.
language: English
title: Graham Greene: Collected Stories
titlecomplete: Graham Greene: Collected Stories
genres: 20th Century, Classics, Modern Classics, Fiction, Short Stories, British Literature
ratings_count: 487
publisher: Viking