Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear: An Entertainment

Christopher Gonzalez (Ohio State University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1943

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel
Spy and Espionage

Resources

Frequently excluded from lists of his major works, Graham Greene’s The Ministry of Fear is often classified as genre fiction, in this case as a spy novel. Such a classification held little literary significance in Greene’s time, despite the example of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1907), John Buchan’s Greenmantle (1915) and Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden (1928). However, Greene’s “entertainments” — notably including the highly perceptive Vietnam-novel The Quiet American (1955) and the comic Our Man in Havana (1958) — raised the status of the spy novel through the blending of his fine storytelling prowess with astute commentary on the geopolitical state of the …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2924 words

Citation: Gonzalez, Christopher. "The Ministry of Fear: An Entertainment". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 January 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23517, accessed 24 November 2024.]

Save this article