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The Captain and the Enemy

Graham Greene The Captain and the Enemy Reading Order

Graham Greene's The Captain and the Enemy (1988) is his final novel — the slim, enigmatic last statement of a career that spanned more than fifty years of English fiction. The novel follows Victor Baxter, who at the age of twelve is won in a game of backgammon by a man called the Captain, who takes him away from a neglectful father and installs him in a house with a woman called Liza. Victor narrates the story forty years later, trying to understand who the Captain was and what his relationship with Liza meant. The novel has the quality of a dream, organized around gaps and mysteries that are never fully explained.

Where to start

The Quiet American

Complete The Captain and the Enemy Book List

  1. 1

    The Quiet American

    Graham Greene·1955·The essential Greene — his most politically serious novel and the best introduction to the concerns The Captain and the Enemy returns to at the very end of his life; the contrast between the mature work and the late enigmatic last statement illuminates both.
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  2. 2

    The Captain and the Enemy

    Graham Greene·1988·The novel itself — Victor Baxter, the Captain, Liza, and the unexplained relationship that shapes Victor's life.
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  3. 3

    Monsignor Quixote

    Graham Greene·1982·The companion in Greene's late fiction — the loving and relatively peaceful comedy that immediately precedes The Captain and the Enemy; reading Monsignor Quixote before The Captain and the Enemy gives the full picture of Greene's final years.
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  4. 4

    The End of the Affair

    Graham Greene·1951·The companion in Greene's autobiographical fiction — Sarah Miles and Bendrix; the most nakedly personal of his middle period, which The Captain and the Enemy returns to in a very different, more enigmatic register.
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  5. 5

    The Go-Between

    L.P. Hartley·1953·Hartley's novel about a boy who serves as a messenger between two lovers one summer and whose life is permanently shaped by what he witnesses — the essential parallel to The Captain and the Enemy in its portrait of a child who is used by adults for purposes he doesn't understand and carries the mystery into his adult life.
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  6. 6

    Atonement

    Ian McEwan·2001·McEwan's novel about a child's false accusation and its consequences — the most important recent British novel in the tradition The Captain and the Enemy belongs to: the adult narrator reconstructing a childhood that was shaped by a mystery they couldn't fully understand at the time.
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  7. 7

    Great Expectations

    Charles Dickens·1861·Dickens's novel about Pip's mysterious benefactor — the essential Victorian predecessor to The Captain and the Enemy's portrait of a child taken under the wing of a mysterious figure who turns out to be very different from what they first appeared; the comparison shows Greene working within a tradition that Dickens established.
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The Captain and the Enemy — Frequently Asked Questions

What is The Captain and the Enemy about?

The Captain and the Enemy (1988) follows Victor Baxter, who as a twelve-year-old is 'won' in a game of backgammon by a man called the Captain, who takes him away from his neglectful father. Victor grows up in the care of the Captain and a woman called Liza, and the novel follows him as an adult trying to understand who the Captain was and what he meant. It is Greene's final novel, slim and enigmatic.

Is The Captain and the Enemy Greene's last novel?

Yes — The Captain and the Enemy (1988) was Graham Greene's final novel, published three years before his death in 1991 at the age of eighty-six. It is much slimmer and more enigmatic than his major work, and is generally approached as a coda to his career rather than a major statement.

Is The Captain and the Enemy a good starting point for Graham Greene?

The Captain and the Enemy is not a good starting point for Greene — it is best read as a final, enigmatic work after you know his major fiction. The Quiet American, Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, or The Heart of the Matter are all better introductions to Greene's range and concerns.

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