BookReleaseRadar

Reading Order

The Third Man

Graham Greene The Third Man Reading Order

Graham Greene's The Third Man (1950) began as a novella written to be filmed — Greene wrote it as a treatment before writing the screenplay for Carol Reed's 1949 film — and is now read primarily as a literary work in its own right. Set in post-war Vienna, divided among the four Allied powers and full of penicillin rackets and black markets, the novel follows the pulp western writer Holly Martins, who arrives to join his friend Harry Lime and finds him apparently dead. The investigation of Harry's death reveals a man Holly never knew, operating in a world beyond the simple morality of the westerns he writes.

Where to start

The Quiet American

Complete The Third Man Book List

  1. 1

    The Quiet American

    Graham Greene·1955·The essential companion in Greene's political thrillers — Fowler and Pyle in Saigon, organized around a man whose good intentions are more dangerous than any enemy's malice; the mature expression of the same concern The Third Man explores through the character of Harry Lime.
    Buy
  2. 2

    The Third Man

    Graham Greene·1950·The novella itself — Holly Martins, Harry Lime, post-war Vienna, the ferris wheel, the sewers.
    Buy
  3. 3

    Our Man in Havana

    Graham Greene·1958·The companion in Greene's entertainments — the comic version of what The Third Man treats as moral darkness; both are organized around the gap between a man's sentimental image of his friend and the reality of what that friend has done.
    Buy
  4. 4

    Brighton Rock

    Graham Greene·1938·The essential companion in Greene's moral fiction — Pinkie's authentic Catholic evil; the novel that most directly asks the question The Third Man dramatizes through Harry Lime: what does it mean to acknowledge that someone you love is genuinely evil?
    Buy
  5. 5

    The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

    John le Carré·1963·The most important spy novel in the tradition The Third Man belongs to — the Cold War intelligence world as moral corruption; le Carré acknowledged Greene as his primary influence and The Third Man as a formative text for his own fiction
    Buy
  6. 6

    A Farewell to Arms

    Ernest Hemingway·1929·The essential American parallel in the tradition of post-war disillusionment — the same moral landscape of wartime and aftermath, organized around a similar gap between the romantic values characters bring to the war and the reality they encounter; the comparison shows the American and British responses to the same twentieth-century catastrophe
    Buy
  7. 7

    Night Train to Lisbon

    Pascal Mercier·2004·Mercier's novel about a Swiss professor who follows a mysterious trail through Lisbon and Portugal's past — the most direct contemporary heir to The Third Man's interest in a man's reconstruction of another person's life and values, organized around the discovery that the person he thought he knew was someone entirely different
    Buy

The Third Man — Frequently Asked Questions

What is The Third Man about?

The Third Man follows Holly Martins, an American writer of pulp westerns, who arrives in post-war Vienna to join his friend Harry Lime and finds him apparently dead. His investigation of Harry's death reveals that Harry has been diluting penicillin on the black market, causing the deaths of children in the process. The novel is organized around Holly's discovery that the friend he idolized was a man he never knew.

Was The Third Man written as a novel or a film first?

Graham Greene wrote The Third Man as a novella — which he called a 'treatment' — before writing the screenplay for Carol Reed's 1949 film. The novella was published in 1950. Greene always said that the film (with Orson Welles as Harry Lime) was better than the novella, but the literary work has its own qualities, particularly the narrative voice of Greene himself as the story's first-person narrator.

Is The Third Man based on real events?

The world of The Third Man is drawn directly from Greene's experience in post-war Vienna, which he visited while researching the novel. The diluted penicillin racket was real — Greene heard about it and used it as the basis for Harry Lime's crime. The four-power occupation of Vienna was also real and gave the novel its political geography.

All The Third Man BooksBrowse All SeriesBooks Like The Third Man →

Monthly Newsletter

Never miss a big release

Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.

Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.

Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.