From Publishers Weekly
In time for the centenary of Greene's birth comes Sherry's magnificent, much anticipated final installment of his biographic trilogy. At this stage in Greene's life, his literary career was soaring, his celebrity international and his personal life profoundly unhappy. Unable to come to any permanent arrangement with his married mistress, Catherine Walston, and continually struggling with depression and suicide, he sought means of escape in his books and his travels. Sherry's promise to follow literally in his subject's footsteps yields especially vivid portrayals of Castro's Cuba, the last colonial days of the Belgian Congo and Papa "Doc" Duvalier's nightmarish Haiti. Once again, Sherry diligently tracks down the actual inspirations for fictional characters and situations (as well as possible work by Greene for the British secret service) and judiciously discusses Greene's idiosyncratic Catholicism. His more questionable activities, however, such as aiding the causes of Panamanian dictator Torrijos and the Sandinista regime, do not escape Sherry's scrutiny. Sherry himself enters the story in 1974, eventually becoming Greene's sanctioned biographer, and he comments throughout about his experience finishing this monumental work, such as his arguments with competing biographer Michael Sheldon. With Sherry's access to all Greene's papers, his personal bond with his subject and his keen understanding of the enigmatic author, Sherry has no biographic rival; this work is authoritative. Photos not seen by PW. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Graham Greene's authorized biographer, Norman Sherry, must have faced terrible anxiety in bringing this third and final volume to a close. His subject had anticipated surviving the first volume's publication (in 1989), dying before he could read the second (1994), and being joined by Sherry himself before the third could be completed. Given Greene's penchant for prophecy -- notably in The Quiet American (1955), which foresaw U.S. intervention in Vietnam -- Sherry had reason to dwell on the third volume for a decade. He ducks Greene's omen by leaving the last chapter incomplete, parting with a dreamlike fragment:"At the news of Graham Greene's death, the king of writers dead, the chair empty, many felt a deep sadness, and young men, thinking of the quiet spirit of the newly dead (who had published compulsively for almost seventy years), were, even in their youth, made aware of their own mortality. Look into the sky, Signore, his star is not yet out. Let peace . . . " This loophole is a fitting end to a tale of literature's most celebrated Catholic convert. Greene, who died in 1991, never presumed heavenly pardon for his transgressions, yet in his fiction he believed in grace. He glimpsed mercy through the eyes of his characters, through the aperture of their sins and sufferings.Volume III of The Life of Graham Greene picks up where Sherry left our man, in an apartment off Piccadilly Circus, his reputation at its height. At 51, Greene is nursing a surrogate career as dramatist. In Volume II, he befriended Alexander Korda and Carol Reed; the trio made "The Fallen Idol" (1948) and "The Third Man" (1949), a film-noir classic. Now he receives, unexpectedly, a Broadway premiere of his 1957 play, "The Potting Shed," which, in Sherry's view, contains "surely one of the most memorable moments of a play in our time." That "surely" fails to convince. Like other parts of the book where Sherry applies literary criticism to Greene's writing, the claim cries out for substantiation."The Potting Shed" introduces us to "the first of Greene's hollow men" in the character of James Callifer, a spiritually bereft middle-ager who learns that his uncle, a priest, sacrificed his faith in an act of compassion. Few of Greene's readers are likely to be familiar with his plays, yet the paradox of the priest's logic recalls novels like The Heart of the Matter (1948) and The End of the Affair (1951), where Catholic dogma is tested by the trials of the protagonists and individual love competes with divine absolution.The heart of Sherry's matter is Greene's continued affair with Catherine Walston, variously styled by his biographer as "his ultimate love" and "the sun of his life in the beginning, and later the winter of his despair." Their correspondence forms the centerpiece of Volume II. A glutton for superlatives, Sherry calls Greene's contribution "some of the most passionate love letters in the language." In Volume III, the letters take on a more desperate quality, with Greene trying to maneuver a holiday with Catherine, whose husband is running for a minor political post. Their inability to get together allows Greene to fall for the Swedish actress Anita Björk. Greene's dilemma resembles the agony he felt 10 years earlier while juggling Catherine and his wife, Vivien.Indeed, partly due to Sherry's circular narration, there is a repetitive feel to The Life of Graham Greene; similar incidents are recast and understood from different perspectives. Sherry deploys witty asides to break up the monotony: "If we are tiring of Greene's ardent correspondence, think of the onslaught on Catherine." All the same, she represented the last hope of happiness for the graying Greene, just as travel to dangerous places revived his spirit. "Greene made the world his workplace, any strange hotel his study, and as long as Catherine was with him he was centered, at peace, so he could write. In Catherine's company he could draw on the unknown measure of himself, find his own secret amplitude." Greene wrote three of his best novels while consorting with Catherine -- The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair and The Quiet American. The couple's breakup -- and Greene's breakdown where faith is concerned -- provoked A Burnt-Out Case (1961), set in a leper colony in the Congo. The name of the novel's anti-hero, Querry, conveys the restless seeking one associates with Greene's life, a man who has touched bottom but keeps digging. It could also describe his unflappable biographer.Sherry won Greene's approval for the project by vowing to personally revisit all of the novelist's former haunts. Volume III takes the reader to Cuba, Haiti, Paraguay and Panama -- destinations that produced some of Greene's later works, and where the originals of his characters can be found. From the mid-1970s onward, Sherry interviewed Greene and almost everyone still alive who came into contact with the author at a critical period.Yet for all his travels and interviews, Sherry sheds little light on how Greene could have justified to himself the pain he caused Vivien and Dorothy Glover -- a woman he romanced during the London Blitz -- not to mention the cuckolded husbands of Catherine and Yvonne Cloetta, with whom Greene spent the last three decades of his life. Sherry portrays Greene as a relentless champion of the underdog -- yet in each case one wonders who was the real victim of those relationships."I'm for the victim, and victims change," Greene is quoted as saying. It's an attractive motto, but so much depends on the speaker's judgment. On a handful of occasions, Sherry takes his subject to task, questioning Greene's early admiration for Fidel Castro and, what seems worse, his excuses for the British traitor Kim Philby. When Sherry quizzed Greene on Philby and the lives he endangered by spying for Soviet Russia, the novelist flared: "YOU DON'T KNOW HIM. AND CANNOT JUDGE." This rap on the knuckles may explain why Sherry's criticisms are so tentative.On other occasions, Greene implored his biographer: "Tell the truth, Norman, tell the truth" and "No lies please. Follow me to the end of my life." By this standard, Sherry cannot be accused of failing his subject. Even if he had not enjoyed exclusive rights to quote from unpublished material -- Volume III proclaims the fact in a reproduction of a letter Greene signed days before his death -- future biographers would be daunted by the sheer data The Life of Graham Greene accumulates. Sherry's three volumes, while captivating of their own accord, may free other writers to give Greene and his favorite authors a closer read, tracing the genealogy of his novels, essays and plays. Somehow, one senses, there will be more to unearth. The most endearing aspect of The Life of Graham Greene is the humility of Sherry's recognition that in an odd, "Citizen Kane" sort of way, Greene's motives often remain a mystery.For example, Sherry speculates in a footnote that, had Greene been alive during the Sept. 11 attacks on America and had Ronald Reagan been in office, Greene would have supported the former president despite his opposition to Reagan's policies in El Salvador and Nicaragua. With Greene, however, one cannot be sure. He told V.S. Naipaul in the late 1960s that he was indifferent to the Middle East -- though he enjoyed a visit to Israel (declaring himself "pro-Israel") and later picked up the Jerusalem Prize. In an election year -- the year of Greene's centenary -- one misses the spark of his contrary flame.Sherry is on firmer ground when treating Greene's love of mischief, such as his creation of a farcical society to honor critics of Nabokov's Lolita, which Greene helped introduce to the West, and his generosity to countless writers. Most impressive are Greene's powers of description, which pared his prose of ornament, and his prodigious output. (His 500 words a day has become a model for many writers.) "Good writing is one of the few things he believed in," a friend recounts; it was the one faith from which he never swerved. Reviewed by Sunil Iyengar Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
With this volume Sherry, a professor of literature at Trinity University in San Antonio, completes his biography of prolific British writer Graham Greene (The Quiet American, The Third Man, and The End of the Affair, and more than 30 other novels). Sherry relied on all of Greene’s papers, drew on their personal friendship, and even travelled in his footsteps—and his perseverance in uncovering all facets of Greene’s life shows. Sherry’s especially adept at placing Greene within the larger politico-historical context. But critics fault the biography for its breadth, length, and factual inconsistencies. Despite these drawbacks, Graham Greene is sure to be the definitive biography—if you can get through a few thousand pages.Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Readers hear the authentic voice of Graham Greene in the 1948 masterpiece The Heart of the Matter when Scobie describes peace as "the most beautiful word in the language." In the final volume of this definitive life of Greene, however, Sherry recounts few peaceful episodes. Rather, he chronicles years during which Greene turned almost everything--politics, romance, literature, and religion--into reasons for conflict. Greene's readers might well have expected the author's lifetime fascination with dangerous and exotic locales to entangle him in the violence of Papa Doc's Haiti and the tumult of Torrijos' Panama. Greene's earlier history of marital infidelity and sexual adventure likewise makes predictable the amorous tensions Sherry highlights in Greene's later life. More surprising are the wars kindled by Greene's literary labors. For while Greene found some end-of-career equanimity in his mature literary triumphs (including The Honorary Consul) and in his various international honors, Sherry still finds him a man vexed by critical controversies and enmeshed in disputes over a Nobel Prize he never received. Nor did Greene's religious faith--eaten away by doubt and self-accusation--provide much late-life serenity or assurance. In narrating Greene's unending struggles, Sherry candidly confronts the author's deplorable lapses in craft and judgment. But, in the end, he delivers a writer who triumphed in his truth-seeking artistry and who even experienced the unexpected final beauty of peace on his Swiss deathbed. Greene's many readers will cherish this poignant and detailed concluding volume to a masterful portrait. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

The Washington Post Book World
A fascinating portrait of an author as a double agent with a passion for secrecy, deception, and manipulation.

The New York Times Book Review
A compulsively readable, astutely human account.

Margaret Atwood
The definitive biography... portrays not only the writer himself but the times he lived through in Proustian detail.

Shirley Hazzard
A life that seems itself like an engrossing novel, brought to us with sensibility, knowledge and power.

Joyce Carol Oates
Rich with fascinating, dramatic detail…Greene’s prodigious energies and inspiration are well-matched by Norman Sherry’s intelligence, sympathy, and powers of analysis.

Book Description
October 2, 2004, marks the centenary of one of the twentieth century’s most important literary figures: Graham Greene. In volume three, Norman Sherry brings this magisterial biography—twenty-seven years in the making—to a close. Following Greene, still an agent for the British government, from prerevolutionary Cuba and the Belgian Congo to adulterous interludes in Capri and Antibes, Sherry shows Greene at the height of his fame, in the company of other literary luminaries such as T. S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, Ian Fleming, and Noël Coward. Through unparalleled access to letters, to diaries, and to Greene himself, Sherry reveals with insight and eloquence Greene’s obsessions, his complicated religious feelings, and most significantly, his art. This volume, with its wealth of new and shocking details, brings to a close what Margaret Atwood called "the definitive biography."

About the Author
Norman Sherry is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Mitchell distinguished professor of literature at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. In addition to the first two volumes of The Life of Graham Greene, he is the author of Conrad’s Eastern World, Conrad’s Western World, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, and Jane Austen.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

October 2, 2004, marks the centenary of one of the twentieth century's mostimportant literary figures: Graham Greene. In volume three, Norman Sherry brings this magisterial biography—twenty-seven years in the making—to a close. Following Greene, still an agent for the British government, from prerevolutionary Cuba and the Belgian Congo to adulterous interludes in Capri and Antibes, Sherry shows Greene at the height of his fame, in the company of other literary luminaries such as T. S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, Ian Fleming, and Noël Coward.

Through unparalleled access to letters, to diaries, and to Greene himself, Sherry reveals with insight and eloquence Greene's obsessions, his complicated religious feelings, and most significantly, his art. This volume, with its wealth of new and shocking details, brings to a close what Margaret Atwood called ￯﾿ﾽthe definitive biography.￯﾿ﾽ secrecy, deception, and manipulation. (The Washington Post Book World) Book Review) times he lived through in Proustian detail. (Margaret Atwood) sensibility, knowledge and power. (Shirley Hazzard) inspiration are well-matched by Norman Sherry's intelligence, sympathy, and powers of analysis. (Joyce Carol Oates)

Author Biography: Norman Sherry is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Mitchell distinguished professor of literature at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. In addition to the first two volumes of The Life of Graham Greene, he is the author of Conrad's Eastern World, Conrad's Western World, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, and Jane Austen.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In time for the centenary of Greene's birth comes Sherry's magnificent, much anticipated final installment of his biographic trilogy. At this stage in Greene's life, his literary career was soaring, his celebrity international and his personal life profoundly unhappy. Unable to come to any permanent arrangement with his married mistress, Catherine Walston, and continually struggling with depression and suicide, he sought means of escape in his books and his travels. Sherry's promise to follow literally in his subject's footsteps yields especially vivid portrayals of Castro's Cuba, the last colonial days of the Belgian Congo and Papa "Doc" Duvalier's nightmarish Haiti. Once again, Sherry diligently tracks down the actual inspirations for fictional characters and situations (as well as possible work by Greene for the British secret service) and judiciously discusses Greene's idiosyncratic Catholicism. His more questionable activities, however, such as aiding the causes of Panamanian dictator Torrijos and the Sandinista regime, do not escape Sherry's scrutiny. Sherry himself enters the story in 1974, eventually becoming Greene's sanctioned biographer, and he comments throughout about his experience finishing this monumental work, such as his arguments with competing biographer Michael Sheldon. With Sherry's access to all Greene's papers, his personal bond with his subject and his keen understanding of the enigmatic author, Sherry has no biographic rival; this work is authoritative. Photos not seen by PW. (On sale Sept. 27) FYI: Penguin is simultaneously publishing commemorative editions of Greene's most popular works and reissuing in paperback the first two volumes of Sherry's biography. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Just in time for Greene's centenary, Sherry wraps up a biography that has been 27 years in the making. With a three-city author tour. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews