Classic Books Store
The Third Man
RRP: $13.00
Our Price: $10.40
You Save: $ 2.60 ( 20% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Author: Graham Greene
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $10.40
You Save: $ 2.60 ( 20% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Author: Graham Greene
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Average Customer Rating:
Experimental feature: Order The Third Man from the UK, Canada, Germany or France by clicking an appropriate flag below.
Some items available at Amazon.com are not available in all countries.
Some items available at Amazon.com are not available in all countries.
The Third Man Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780140286823
ISBN: 0140286829
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 160
Publication Date: 1999-05-01
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780140286823
ISBN: 0140286829
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 160
Publication Date: 1999-05-01
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Editorial Review of The Third Man
The Third Man is one of the truly great post-war films, the Oscar winner starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton. This complete novella is the original basis for that film. The story centers on a pulp-fiction writer who is searching for an old friend in post-World War II Vienna. When he discovers that his friend died under suspicious circumstances, he becomes inextricably involved in the mystery. Graham Greene, recognized as one of the most important writers of this century, brings the listener face to face with fundamental questions of morality and personal loyalty. Martin Jarvis truly demonstrates his vocal virtuosity as he captures Greene's taut dialogue, minimalist characterizations, and international cast. 2 cassettes.
Customer Reviews of The Third Man
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Well done again Mr Jarvis! (Review of the audiobook)
Review: A splendid audio rendition of a good book by Mr Jarvis, who would be able to make the reading the yellow pages entertaining... Mr Jarvis is an excellent actor, his voice is loud and clear, and he assigns different voices (and different accents!) to each different character (without falling in the annoying habit of many male readers of using falsetto when playing women). I think his voice is especially well-suited to express cynicism, of which you will find a lot in this story.
If you like audio book, Mr Jarvis is one of the best voices around (you may want to check out his marvelous Dickens audio renditions). This audiobook is fairly short, 4 tapes only, but it is also very inexpensive. I like Greene's writing style a lot, and even if the book is probably not as much of a masterpiece as the movie (whose tune though remains here as well in the audio rendition), the audiobook is certainly worth its price, and I am actually writing this review while I approach the end of my second listening.
So, highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: weak greene.
Review: i have read 5 graham greene books and this is by far the lamest of them. this was conceived of first as a hollywood movie, and it shows. the book is not much more that a silly, corny thriller (just what hollywood orders over and over and over). there is very little character development involved, & the the sense of place (vienna after world war ii) could have been given much greater depth, as well. this is simply a plot being rushed onto the big screen ( a half-baked, lame plot, at that) to make some cash. pass this one by.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Second Version
Review: This book spent two decades on my shelf without my so much as touching it. Now I've read it, and I wish I had read it a long time and several Harry Limes ago in my life.
You don't need enemies with friends like Harry Lime. For starters, he effectively strands his old school friend Rollo Martins in postwar Vienna. Lime is occupied with other matters at that moment, like his own funeral, but it still leaves a sour taste, especially after a number of questions are raised in Rollo's mind. Did Harry really kill children by selling tainted penicillin? What secrets about Harry does his former lover Anna hold so close? And who was that third man seen helping move Harry's body after he was hit by that car?
Though it was written before the more celebrated movie of the same name Graham Greene worked on with director Carol Reed, "The Third Man" came out a year after the film in 1950, well in advance of le Carre and Fleming and the spy thriller. Short and to the point, Greene seems to employ an almost Hemingwayesque terseness to his narrative, describing a shattered Austrian city so: "A thaw set in that night, and all over Vienna the snow melted, and the ugly ruins came to life again: steel rods hanging like stalacitites, and rusty girders thrusting like bones through the grey slush."
There's not much of Greene's layered depth to be found here; Rollo drinks a little and is bad with women, but otherwise he's pretty much exists for the sake of drawing out Harry Lime. Because Martins "believed in friendship," as explained on the first page, he is set to suffer at the hands of Lime, dead or alive, as Rollo discovers a cold heart he never knew. For Rollo, it makes a difference what kind of man Harry was; to his surprise others are more indifferent about it.
The movie presents a few key differences, such as the oft-quoted line about the Swiss contribution to mankind and the resolution of Martins' relationship with Anna, one of cinema's most arresting images which feels empty here. Rollo goes by the name "Holly" in the movie and is played as an American, not a Brit, by actor Joseph Cotton. He still writes cheap westerns but doesn't suffer exactly the same indignities for it Rollo does in the book. Greene notes in a preface that he himself thinks the movie works better, and he's right, but like other reviewers here say, you get an interesting line here on the thought processes of the central players, not to mention another examination of sin and salvation from the author of "Brighton Rock" and "The Power And The Glory."
People can be like ants when seen from high above, but when someone looks down on them and asks: "Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving - forever?" it's not the humanity of those down below that's being obscured. Rollo finds himself with a difficult choice between concrete loyalty and abstract morality, and though "The Third Man" doesn't press this point so much as simply raise it, it makes for an examination of man's duality you would do well not to leave on the shelf as long as I did.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: It's not as good as the movie
Review: When I bought this book I did not realize that it was written after the movie. It is not good Graham Greene. The book follows the movie closely but, it adds very little. As I read the story I miss the music. Save your money and buy the DVD.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Not supposed to be read, and yet a great reading
Review: As Graham Greene admits in the preface of the novella "The Third Man", this story 'was never written to be read but only to be seen'. When invite by director Carol Reed to write a screenplay, the British novelist decided to write a short story first and then develop the script. As he confess, it is too hard to write a movie without having worked on the story previously, because the movie depends also on characterization, mood and atmosphere, and these are hard to be captured in the first time in a screenplay.
That is a mark of a genius. He wrote "The Third Man" only as a blueprint for the script and, nevertheless, both story and movie are great. It is a novella with a little more than 100 pages, and yet largely entertaining, as the writer wanted it to be. Not many writers are capable of doing such a amazing story without pretension -- because it is not easy to acquire simplicity.
The plot is not complicated as well. A British writer arrives in the pos-War divided Vienna to meet an old friend, who turns out to be dead. But there are some suspicious events surrounding his death -- and he also has a gorgeous girlfriend, who is very sad. Rollo, the main character, ends up investigating the death and there comes many twists in the plot of the story.
"The Third Man" is a very short narrative, nevertheless, Greene succeeded in all he wanted. More than anything, the story has atmosphere. Vienna is destroyed, picking up the pieces -- so are the characters who are caught in a plot bigger than themselves. However much Rollo doesn't want to be involved with his friend's death -- he can't avoid due to the train of events that catch him.
The writing is Greene at his best. The plot is convincing and well built with tension and fun coming from every page. Although the novel is slightly different from the movie, fans of Carol Reed's genial "The Third Man" can't be disappointed with the short story that was the genesis of this that is considered the best British movie ever.
Review Summary: Well done again Mr Jarvis! (Review of the audiobook)
Review: A splendid audio rendition of a good book by Mr Jarvis, who would be able to make the reading the yellow pages entertaining... Mr Jarvis is an excellent actor, his voice is loud and clear, and he assigns different voices (and different accents!) to each different character (without falling in the annoying habit of many male readers of using falsetto when playing women). I think his voice is especially well-suited to express cynicism, of which you will find a lot in this story.
If you like audio book, Mr Jarvis is one of the best voices around (you may want to check out his marvelous Dickens audio renditions). This audiobook is fairly short, 4 tapes only, but it is also very inexpensive. I like Greene's writing style a lot, and even if the book is probably not as much of a masterpiece as the movie (whose tune though remains here as well in the audio rendition), the audiobook is certainly worth its price, and I am actually writing this review while I approach the end of my second listening.
So, highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: weak greene.
Review: i have read 5 graham greene books and this is by far the lamest of them. this was conceived of first as a hollywood movie, and it shows. the book is not much more that a silly, corny thriller (just what hollywood orders over and over and over). there is very little character development involved, & the the sense of place (vienna after world war ii) could have been given much greater depth, as well. this is simply a plot being rushed onto the big screen ( a half-baked, lame plot, at that) to make some cash. pass this one by.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Second Version
Review: This book spent two decades on my shelf without my so much as touching it. Now I've read it, and I wish I had read it a long time and several Harry Limes ago in my life.
You don't need enemies with friends like Harry Lime. For starters, he effectively strands his old school friend Rollo Martins in postwar Vienna. Lime is occupied with other matters at that moment, like his own funeral, but it still leaves a sour taste, especially after a number of questions are raised in Rollo's mind. Did Harry really kill children by selling tainted penicillin? What secrets about Harry does his former lover Anna hold so close? And who was that third man seen helping move Harry's body after he was hit by that car?
Though it was written before the more celebrated movie of the same name Graham Greene worked on with director Carol Reed, "The Third Man" came out a year after the film in 1950, well in advance of le Carre and Fleming and the spy thriller. Short and to the point, Greene seems to employ an almost Hemingwayesque terseness to his narrative, describing a shattered Austrian city so: "A thaw set in that night, and all over Vienna the snow melted, and the ugly ruins came to life again: steel rods hanging like stalacitites, and rusty girders thrusting like bones through the grey slush."
There's not much of Greene's layered depth to be found here; Rollo drinks a little and is bad with women, but otherwise he's pretty much exists for the sake of drawing out Harry Lime. Because Martins "believed in friendship," as explained on the first page, he is set to suffer at the hands of Lime, dead or alive, as Rollo discovers a cold heart he never knew. For Rollo, it makes a difference what kind of man Harry was; to his surprise others are more indifferent about it.
The movie presents a few key differences, such as the oft-quoted line about the Swiss contribution to mankind and the resolution of Martins' relationship with Anna, one of cinema's most arresting images which feels empty here. Rollo goes by the name "Holly" in the movie and is played as an American, not a Brit, by actor Joseph Cotton. He still writes cheap westerns but doesn't suffer exactly the same indignities for it Rollo does in the book. Greene notes in a preface that he himself thinks the movie works better, and he's right, but like other reviewers here say, you get an interesting line here on the thought processes of the central players, not to mention another examination of sin and salvation from the author of "Brighton Rock" and "The Power And The Glory."
People can be like ants when seen from high above, but when someone looks down on them and asks: "Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving - forever?" it's not the humanity of those down below that's being obscured. Rollo finds himself with a difficult choice between concrete loyalty and abstract morality, and though "The Third Man" doesn't press this point so much as simply raise it, it makes for an examination of man's duality you would do well not to leave on the shelf as long as I did.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: It's not as good as the movie
Review: When I bought this book I did not realize that it was written after the movie. It is not good Graham Greene. The book follows the movie closely but, it adds very little. As I read the story I miss the music. Save your money and buy the DVD.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Not supposed to be read, and yet a great reading
Review: As Graham Greene admits in the preface of the novella "The Third Man", this story 'was never written to be read but only to be seen'. When invite by director Carol Reed to write a screenplay, the British novelist decided to write a short story first and then develop the script. As he confess, it is too hard to write a movie without having worked on the story previously, because the movie depends also on characterization, mood and atmosphere, and these are hard to be captured in the first time in a screenplay.
That is a mark of a genius. He wrote "The Third Man" only as a blueprint for the script and, nevertheless, both story and movie are great. It is a novella with a little more than 100 pages, and yet largely entertaining, as the writer wanted it to be. Not many writers are capable of doing such a amazing story without pretension -- because it is not easy to acquire simplicity.
The plot is not complicated as well. A British writer arrives in the pos-War divided Vienna to meet an old friend, who turns out to be dead. But there are some suspicious events surrounding his death -- and he also has a gorgeous girlfriend, who is very sad. Rollo, the main character, ends up investigating the death and there comes many twists in the plot of the story.
"The Third Man" is a very short narrative, nevertheless, Greene succeeded in all he wanted. More than anything, the story has atmosphere. Vienna is destroyed, picking up the pieces -- so are the characters who are caught in a plot bigger than themselves. However much Rollo doesn't want to be involved with his friend's death -- he can't avoid due to the train of events that catch him.
The writing is Greene at his best. The plot is convincing and well built with tension and fun coming from every page. Although the novel is slightly different from the movie, fans of Carol Reed's genial "The Third Man" can't be disappointed with the short story that was the genesis of this that is considered the best British movie ever.