The Human Factor
Book description
'Graham Greene's beautiful and disturbing novel is filled with tenderness, humour, excitement and doubt' The Times
A leak is traced to a small sub-section of the secret service, sparking off the inevitable security checks, tensions and suspicions. The sort of atmosphere, perhaps, where mistakes could be made? For Maurice Castle,…
Why read it?
2 authors picked The Human Factor as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Before I started writing my first spy novel, I came across a hardback second-hand copy of The Human Factor in an antique store. On the inside flap, Greene wrote about wanting to write about spies with pensions. The phrase stuck with me.
Greene’s spy lives in a suburban house and commutes to work like any of his neighbours but he is a traitor with his own dark secrets. What an intriguing idea. Greene himself was a spy during WW2 and a friend of one of the greatest traitors in British history – Kim Philby.
From Merle's list on spy books that spies read and sometimes wrote themselves.
Describing any book as the best of its kind is controversial but few writers in any genre can match one of the true literary giants of the 20th century. Greene worked for MI6 in West Africa during the Second World War before coming back to England where he worked alongside Kim Philby countering German spies based in Portugal and Spain. Elements of his sympathy for Philby, a KGB agent at the heart of MI6, are evident in The Human Factor, where MI6 officer Maurice Castle finds himself embroiled in an investigation into leaks to the KGB from…
From Michael's list on spy thrillers by former members of MI6.
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