Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 4, 1991 TAG: 9104040517
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-2 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: GENEVA LENGTH: Medium
The British author died at La Providence Hospital in Vevey on Lake Geneva, where he had been admitted Sunday and been treated repeatedly since the fall, hospital director Robert Bertschy said. He did not give a cause of death but said Greene had been suffering from a blood disease.
Greene's career spanned more than half a century. He wrote 24 novels and several successful movie scripts, traveled widely and was drawn to political controversy throughout his career.
"He was a great and magical writer, hard to fit into any pattern," said spy novelist John Le Carre, who described Greene as his "guiding star."
An Anglican convert to Roman Catholicism, Greene combined a passion for politics, exoticism and religion. He decribed writing as a way of "finding peace, though it is a very unpeaceful process of finding."
Some of his most acclaimed novels include "The Power and the Glory" and "The Heart of the Matter," which reflected Greene's inner conflicts over religion.
Greene wrote the movie script for the classic 1950 spy thriller "The Third Man" and also wrote children's books, plays and lighter novels such as "Our Man in Havana," a spy spoof.
He was honored by Queen Elizabeth II and the French government but never won a Nobel Prize despite several nominations.
Greene was born in Berkhamsted, England, on Oct. 2, 1904. His father, Charles Henry Greene, was headmaster of Berkhamsted School, a prestigious boarding school for boys.
Greene ran away from school for a time and was sent to a psychoanalyst at 16. Shortly afterward, he flirted with suicide, trying out "Russian roulette" several times.
Rebelling against an oppressive adolescence, Greene became a Communist Party member - for six weeks - while studying at Oxford University. He converted to Roman Catholicism at 22.
His first novel, "The Man Within," was published in 1929.
Religious salvation was in full flower as one of Greene's favorite themes in "The Power and the Glory," considered his best novel by many. It tells of a Mexican priest who keeps the Roman Catholic faith despite political persecution, sex and alcohol.
Some of his most serious works reflected his conversion to Catholicism, delving into the relationship between adultery and religious faith.
One of these, "The Heart of the Matter" (1948), was set in Sierra Leone, where Greene worked as a secret agent on African assignment for the British Foreign Office.
Greene moved last year to Corseaux, a village with a view of Lake Geneva and the French Alps, after living on the French Riviera for almost 25 years. He shared the Swiss apartment with his companion, Yvonne Cloetta, to whom he dedicated his last novel, "The Captain and the Enemy."
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by CNB