Unfinished Greene novel found
2009-07-20 18:04
London - A long-lost, unfinished Graham Greene novel is being serialised in a US magazine this month, and the editor may invite readers to complete it.
The Empty Chair, comprising five chapters and around 22 000 words, is a murder mystery set in a country house, drawing comparisons with the champion of the rural English "whodunnit", Agatha Christie.
"It does have the ingredients of an Agatha Christie country house murder mystery, but (the story by) Graham Greene has a unique twist to it," said Andrew Gulli, managing editor of US-based The Strand Magazine which is printing the story.
"The vivid characterisation of Graham Greene is there," he added. "Although he wrote it when he was 22, it's clearly a work by Greene, the work of a mature writer."
The Empty Chair opens with Alice Lady Perriham, an actor who married into the aristocracy who was "exquisitely conscious of looking no more than 35", hosting a house party.
Important stage in Greene's life
Her guests discover the body of Richard Groves, who one character describes as "a dark, surly, underhand brute", with a knife plunged into his chest.
The manuscript, written in 1926, was discovered in 2008 by Greene scholar Francois Gallix at the Humanities Centre in the University of Texas.
Gallix said the incomplete story came at an important stage in British novelist Greene's life, because in 1926 he converted to Roman Catholicism and started working as a sub-editor at the Times newspaper in London on a trial basis.
And according to his biographer, it was also the year he decided he would try to become a successful author.
The Strand will publish one chapter each in the next five quarterly issues, and is considering holding a competition to complete the story.
"Whatever happens, we want to make sure the estate of Graham Greene is happy with that," Gulli said.
"If they are interested in finding an author (to finish it) that would be great, if they are interested in a reader's contest, that is also great."
Greene is best known for novels including The Power and the Glory and The Quiet American.
The Strand magazine, which focuses on mystery fiction, featured work by Greene, Christie, Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle among others when it was published in Britain from 1891 to 1950.
Falling circulation and rising costs following World War II forced it to close, but it was revived in the United States in 1998. It recently published an unearthed story by Mark Twain as well as a lost PG Wodehouse story.