Author: Graham Greene (1904-1991)
Publisher: Penguin Press 1999
First published by Viking Press 1950
The Third Man was never written to be read but only to be seen.
I bought the book.
Brian Green mentions (in his preface) how the idea of the story was germinated.
— Most novelists, I suppose, carry round in their heads or in their notebooks the first ideas for stories that have never came to be written. Sometimes one turns them over after many years and thinks regretfully that they would have been good once, in a time now dead. So, twenty years back, on the flap of an envelope, I had written an opening paragraph: “I had paid my last farewell to Harry a week ago, when his coffin was lowered into the frozen February ground, so that it was with incredulity that I saw him pass by, without a sign of recognition, among the host of strangers in the Strand”. —
This story sounds like a the screenplay of a movie. Actually, a movie based on this story was released in 1949. I have not seen the movie (yet). However, I felt like watching a movie while reading this book. I do not claim this is a classic—it is a Penguin Classic—but I really enjoyed “watching the movie” in my mind.
The following is the Google description of the movie.
— Set in postwar Vienna, Austria, "The Third Man" stars Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, who arrives penniless as a guest of his childhood chum Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to find him dead. Martins develops a conspiracy theory after learning of a "third man" present at the time of Harry's death, running into interference from British officer Maj. Calloway (Trevor Howard) and falling head-over-heels for Harry's grief-stricken lover, Anna (Alida Valli). —
Graham Greene is the person who helped and encouraged R. K. Narayan to write and publish is "Mulgudi" stories.
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