The End of the Affair

Graham Greene

Summary

Graham Greene’s masterful novel of love and betrayal in World War II London is “undeniably a major work of art” (The New Yorker).   Maurice Bendrix, a writer in Clapham during the Blitz, develops an acquaintance with Sarah Miles, the bored, beautiful wife of a dull civil servant named Henry. Maurice claims it’s to divine a character for his novel-in-progress. That’s the first deception. What he really wants is Sarah, and what Sarah needs is a man with passion. So begins a series of reckless trysts doomed by Maurice’s increasing romantic demands and Sarah’s tortured sense of guilt. Then, after Maurice miraculously survives a bombing, Sarah ends the affair—quickly, absolutely, and without explanation. It’s only when Maurice crosses paths with Sarah’s husband that he discovers the fallout of their duplicity—and it’s more unexpected than Maurice, Henry, or Sarah herself could have imagined.   Adapted for film in both 1956 and 1999, Greene’s novel of all that inspires love—and all that poisons it—is “singularly moving and beautiful” (Evelyn Waugh).

Available since: 03/13/2018.

Print length: 160 pages.

Other books that might interest you

To The Lighthouse - The Original...

Virginia Woolf

The Ramsey family, with house guests, visit the Isle of Skye at least twice. The plot is not at all the point though, as this is a book about how people think and feel and relate. There’s insight into the world of childhood thought and emotion, and a variety of views of adult care and perceptions. I hope this doesn’t make it sound ‘difficult’, it doesn’t need to be – just let the sentences flow and make your own sense of the words. It’s perhaps as close as a novel can come to the highly individual experience of looking at a painting.

Virginia Woolf was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in using stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born into an affluent household in South Kensington, London, the seventh child of Julia Prinsep Jackson and Leslie Stephen in a blended family of eight which included the modernist painter Vanessa Bell. She was home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature from a young age. From 1897 to 1901, she attended the Ladies' Department of King's College London, where she studied classics and history and came into contact with early reformers of women's higher education and the women's rights movement.
Encouraged by her father, Woolf began writing professionally in 1900. After her father's death in 1904, the Stephen family moved from Kensington to the more bohemian Bloomsbury, where, in conjunction with the brothers' intellectual friends, they formed the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group. In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf, and in 1917, the couple founded the Hogarth Press, which published much of her work.

Show book

Adventure of the Empty House The...

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"The Adventure of the Empty House", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Public pressure forced Conan Doyle to bring the sleuth back to life, and explain his apparently miraculous survival of a deadly struggle with Professor Moriarty. This is the first Holmes story set after his supposed death at the Reichenbach Falls, as recounted in "The Final Problem". The Hound of the Baskervilles had seen the return of a pre-Reichenbach Falls Sherlock Holmes, which only served to whet readers' appetites. Doyle ranked "The Adventure of the Empty House" sixth in his list of his twelve favorite Holmes stories.

Show book

His Dog

Albert Payson Terhune

This is a touching and charming tale of the special bond between man and canine; wonderfully warm and accurate. A young farmer loses his father and almost loses his inherited farm through his drinking. Then he stumbles upon an abandoned dog, a collie. The two form a strong bond and the dog becomes an invaluable asset on the farm. However, the real owners of the dog turn up...

Show book

Pose Novel The (Unabridged)

H. G. Wells

"The Pose Novel" by H. G. Wells is a short essay. H. G. Wells once different, humorous social satire and ironic.I watched the little spurts of flame jet out from between the writhing pages of my manuscript, watched the sheets coil up in their fiery anguish and start one from another.

Show book

Colonel Starbottle's Client and...

Bret Harte

Society has forgiven Jo Corbin for killing a man, but can he forgive himself? Will the postmistress lose all in a bid to help a friend escape justice? Will the new teaching assistant's unorthodox ways tame the unruly pioneer children? These are just three of the nine wonderful short stories from Bret Harte, set in wild and woolly nineteenth-century California.Bret Harte's witty, sometimes heart-rending tales of frontier California earned him acclaim during the 1860s as the new prophet of American letters. His books-The Luck of Roaring Camp, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, and M'liss-helped establish the foundations of western American fiction. This book includes the following classic tales:-"Colonel Starbottle's Client"-"The Postmistress of Laurel Run"-"A Night at Hays"-"Johnson's Old Woman"-"The New Assistant at Pine Clearing School"-"In a Pioneer Restaurant"-"A Treasure of the Galleon"-"Out of a Pioneer's Trunk"-"The Ghosts of Stukeley Castle"

Show book

Evelina (Unabridged)

Fanny Burney

Evelina, the title character, is the unacknowledged but legitimate daughter of a dissipated English aristocrat. Her dubious birth has seen her raised in rural seclusion until her seventeenth year. Through a series of humorous events that take place in London and the resort town of Hotwells, near Bristol, Evelina learns how to navigate the complex layers of 18th-century society and earn the love of a distinguished nobleman.

Show book