"A master thriller and a remarkable portrait of a twisted character." — Time   For Arthur Rowe, the trip to the charity fête was a joyful step back into adolescence, a chance to forget the nightmare of the Blitz and the aching guilt of having mercifully murdered his sick wife. He was surviving alone, outside the war, until he happened to win a cake at the fête. From that moment, he is ruthlessly hunted by Nazi agents and finds himself the prey of malign and shadowy forces. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Alan Furst. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. A master thriller and a remarkable portrait of a twisted character. ("Time") Graham Greene (1904-1991), whose long life nearly spanned the length of the twentieth century, was one of its greatest novelists. Educated at Berkhamsted School and Balliol College, Oxford, he started his career as a sub-editor of the  London   Times.  He began to attract notice as a novelist with his fourth book,  Orient Express,  in 1932. In 1935, he trekked across northern Liberia, his first experience in Africa, told in  A Journey Without Maps  (1936). He converted to Catholicism in 1926, an edifying decision, and reported on religious persecution in Mexico in 1938 in  The Lawless Roads,  which served as a background for his famous  The Power and the Glory , one of several “Catholic” novels ( Brighton   Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair).  During the war he worked for the British secret service in Sierra Leone; afterward, he began wide-ranging travels as a journalist, which were reflected in novels such as  The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, The Comedians, Travels with My Aunt, The Honorary Consul, The Human Factor, Monsignor Quixote,  and  The Captain and the Enemy.  As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, two books of autobiography,  A Sort of Life  and  Ways of Escape , two biographies, and four books for children. He also contributed hundreds of essays and film and book reviews to  The Spectator  and other journals, many of which appear in the late collection  Reflections.  Most of his novels have been filmed, including  The Third Man , which the author first wrote as a film treatment. Graham Greene was named Companion of Honour and received the Order of Merit among numerous other awards. Alan Furst is a bestselling author of historical spy novels, including  Night Soldiers ,  Kingdom of Shadows , and most recently,  Dark Voyage .