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The Captain and the Enemy (Penguin Classics) Paperback – August 30, 2005

by Graham Greene (Author), John Auchard (Contributor)
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 230 ratings
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Victor Baxter is a young boy when a secretive stranger known simply as “the Captain” takes him from his boarding school to live in London. Victor becomes the surrogate son and companion of a woman named Liza, who renames him “Jim” and depends on him for any news about the world outside their door. Raised in these odd yet touching circumstances, Jim is never quite sure of Liza’s relationship to the Captain, who is often away on mysterious errands. It is not until Jim reaches manhood that he confronts the Captain and learns the shocking truth about the man, his allegiances, and the nature of love. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by John Auchard.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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  1. Print length
    192 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    August 30, 2005
  4. Dimensions
    8.5 x 5.43 x 0.46 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    9780143039297
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0143039297
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

The master s hand is clearly at work ("The New York Times")

The masteras hand is clearly at work ("The New York Times")

The masters hand is clearly at work ("The New York Times")

The master's hand is clearly at work ("The New York Times")

About the Author

Graham Greene (1904-1991), whose long life nearly spanned the length of the twentieth century, was one of its greatest novelists. Educated at Berkhamsted School and Balliol College, Oxford, he started his career as a sub-editor of The Times of London. He began to attract notice as a novelist with his fourth book, Orient Express, in 1932. In 1935, he trekked across northern Liberia, his first experience in Africa, recounted in A Journey Without Maps (1936). He converted to Catholicism in 1926, an edifying decision, and reported on religious persecution in Mexico in 1938 in The Lawless Roads, which served as a background for his famous The Power and the Glory, one of several “Catholic” novels (Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair). During the war he worked for the British secret service in Sierra Leone; afterward, he began wide-ranging travels as a journalist, which were reflected in novels such as The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, The Comedians, Travels with My Aunt, The Honorary Consul, The Human Factor, Monsignor Quixote, and The Captain and the Enemy. In addition to his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, two books of autobiography—A Sort of Life and Ways of Escape—two biographies, and four books for children. He also contributed hundreds of essays and film and book reviews to The Spectator and other journals, many of which appear in the late collection Reflections. Most of his novels have been filmed, including The Third Man, which the author first wrote as a film treatment. Graham Greene was named Companion of Honour and received the Order of Merit among numerous other awards.

John Auchard is a professor of English at the University of Maryland at College Park, and the editor of The Portable Henry James.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0143039296
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Publishing Group; Reprint edition (August 30, 2005)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 192 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780143039297
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143039297
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.9 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.5 x 5.43 x 0.46 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 230 ratings

About the author

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Graham Greene

Graham Greene

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Henry Graham Greene OM CH (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English novelist and author regarded by some as one of the great writers of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted, in 1967, for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Through 67 years of writings, which included over 25 novels, he explored the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world, often through a Catholic perspective.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
230 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Doctor Moss
4.0 out of 5 stars Love?
Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2013
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This is the last novel that Graham Greene wrote. While I enjoyed reading it, and it provoked thoughts on some interesting questions, it's not one of his strongest stories.

From the beginning the story has a dismal feel. The characters seem doomed, not to disaster so much as to smallness. There's a kind of claustrophobia in the lives led by its narrator, Jim, his adoptive "father" the Captain, and the woman whom the Captain places Jim with as his "mother", Liza. For Liza and Jim, the smallness is physical -- Liza's life is almost completely confined to her basement apartment, infrequently visited by the Captain, and Jim lives in a vacant room in the same apartment building. Both are wary of the outside world, worried that the police, or Jim's Aunt, will discover them, their living situation, or a a clue to the Captain's whereabouts. The Captain, meanwhile, travels, and engages in mostly unknown criminal activities or con games, but even his life seems narrow-tracked in behavior if not in geography.

I gave scare quotes to "mother" and "father" as a hedge on the roles played by Liza and the Captain in Jim's life -- Jim's biological mother is no longer living when the story begins, and his father has lost Jim to the Captain in either a chess game or a backgammon game, depending on who you believe. The Captain takes Jim to live with Liza, to take the place of a baby lost to Liza in pregnancy, and her resulting inability to bear a child of her own.

Jim serves as a witness to Liza's life and relationship to the Captain -- a relationship he can't quite pin down. He notices that neither uses the word "love" to describe their relationship, and, to a boy with no one really playing the role of mother or father, their relationship fails to provide a model of anything at all. Liza longs for visits from the Captain, but the visits are infrequent and full of airy promises of a future, better life together.

Are the Captain and Liza in love? Jim doesn't know. Looking back as he has grown older, he still doesn't know how to characterize their relationship. It's not love as he comes to know it himself. We are left to wonder if what Jim experiences in his own life, though, is any more love than what exists between the Captain and Liza.

Jim himself becomes a writer, fitting his place throughout the book. His life presents him with no models to follow or roles to grow into, just a lot to observe and try to understand.

Greene is always a good writer, and the book rolls along. This story fits the pattern in which he takes the personal stories of his characters and plays them out in the context of big historical events -- here it is the turmoil of Panama and the rest of Central America during the 1970s, although those events only enter the story in its later parts.

There is also the "big" recurring presence of King Kong throughout the book. What place King Kong has in the book is for us to figure out. Here's my idea -- Kong is love made impossible. When the Captain sees Kong's "love" for Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) thwarted by the sheer nature of things, Jim can't understand why it brings tears to the Captain's eyes. It's just the way things are.
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One Tax Mind
5.0 out of 5 stars I am in prose heaven when I read Graham Greene
Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2022
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I have now read most of Graham Greene*s works now. I am 70 and an historian. Greene*s work parallels !e my memory and my study. although these are novels the reader gets a ground level experience with Greene.
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jackson
3.0 out of 5 stars A Failed Love Affair
Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2019
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The Captain and the Enemy is fabled author Graham Greene's last novel. It features the doomed love affair between "The Captain," an enigmatic world traveler and Liza, the caretaker of his adopted son, Jim. It is Jim who carries the story along, following the Captain from England to Central America, trying to determine what, in fact, his mysterious parent is up to. But make no mistake about it: this is not a love story about the Captain and his mistress, or the Captain and his son. No, it is about the author and his failed mistress, Socialism.
Greene was a most talented novelist, arguably the greatest of the twentieth century. His ability to supply humor to the most serious of life's moments is priceless. Yet his true motivation is often heavily guarded. His disdain for governmental espionage is classic. From "The Third Man" to "Our Man in Havana" to "The Quiet American" his attraction to socialism and even communism is apparent. But it is more his dislike of capitalism that drives his novels. He lived for many years in the most desperate parts of the world. That is, where the residents live in gravest of despair. He sides with them with the utmost charity; and when he sees the way Western civilization seems to ravage their countries, steal their natural resources and leave the people homeless and helpless, he sides with the ruthless leaders who do them even more harm.
His later works created monsters of the Americans, in particular. This book, written just after President Carter signed the Panama Canal Treaty, when Reagan was the current president, is especially vicious towards the United States. Reagan, who supplied the Contras with arms in Nicaragua in their fight against the communist Sandanistas and their Cuban and Russian sponsors, gets the lion's share of his wrath; though Reagan himself is not named. There is no doubt that Reagan was directly involved in the Iran-Contra scandal; it was heavy-handed and wrong. But the Sandanistas turned out to be far worse for the poor Nicaraguan people. And it was in the 1980's when the astute Greene saw that socialism was the wrong path for these countries. He saw that the Soviet Union was crumbling from within. He realized that with education comes freedom; not with socialism. Yet he hung on to it even as it decayed from its own excesses. For example, in this book he goes so far as to cast blame on the State of Israel, even as it is being attacked from all sides by the forces of radical Islam, probably the most atrocious masters of human bondage in the world today.
But Greene is still the prince of sarcasm; perhaps most notably here in his use of "King Kong." The poor movie-made ape is, to the end, imagined by the hapless Panamanians as the key to America's spy network. It is a fitting end to a story of failed love and the helpless human condition.
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Top reviews from other countries

B. Bampton
5.0 out of 5 stars Superb
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 28, 2019
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It's a mystery story, not much of a plot and he draws you into a world of unanswered questions. It's just his use of language that hooks me over and over again. I can't recommend it highly enough.
2 people found this helpful
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Anon
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 12, 2016
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Slow start but gripping end
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john.roche@consilium.eu.int
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 13, 2015
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Not received as at 13 June. No comment, therefore.
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