Where to start with Graham Greene

British novelist, 1904–1991.

Best Graham Greene book to start with: Brighton Rock (1938), on 3 of the 16 lists it could have made.

If you like a plot, Brighton Rock is the way in. A teenage gangster in a seaside town, a woman who knows too much and a fear of what comes after death keep it moving.

If you want something shorter and more political, The Quiet American is set in Vietnam during the French war. The End of the Affair is the book for love and doubt in wartime London, and the lists rate it highly too. The Power and the Glory follows a priest on the run in Mexico at a time when the church is banned.

The Heart of the Matter is the slowest of the five. A colonial policeman in West Africa in the Second World War is pulled in two directions, and the book rewards readers who already like Greene’s questions about faith and guilt, so it makes more sense after the others.