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). In 1935, he trekked across northern Liberia, his first experience in Africa, recounted in A Journey Without Maps (1936). He began to attract notice as a novelist with his fourth book, Orient Express, in 1932.

Educated at Berkhamsted School and Balliol College, Oxford, he started his career as a sub-editor of The Times of London. Graham Greene (1904-1991), whose long life nearly spanned the length of the twentieth century, was one of its greatest novelists. 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. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. This edition features a new introduction by John Auchard.įor more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. Published in 1932, Monsignor Quixote is Graham Greene’s last religious novel, a fond homage to Cervantes, and a sincere exploration into the meaning of faith in the modern world. Accompanying him on his mission is his best friend, Sancho, the Communist ex-mayor of the village who argues politics and religion with Quixote and rescues him from the various troubles his innocence lands him in along the way. When Father Quixote, a local priest of the Spanish village of El Toboso who claims ancestry to Cervantes’ fictional Don Quixote, is elevated to the rank of monsignor through a clerical error, he sets out on a journey to Madrid to purchase purple socks appropriate to his new station.

Monsieur quixote