A World of My Own

Graham Greene was always deeply interested in the role played by the subconscious in his writing, and the private world of his dreams was one that he nurtured carefully, recording it almost daily in his dream diaries. Selecting from these dream diaries, he prepared this small treasure for publication just before his death in 1991— a last gift from a great writer to delight and entertain his readers. Graham Greene regarded dreams as central to his life and creativity, and between 1965 and 1989 he kept a dream diary. In this book, which contains his own selections from that diary, Greene gives us access to the private world of his dreams, a fascinating record of another ‘sort of life’. ‘His life, his dreams and his fiction are equally exciting… These privileged experiences make his dreams paradoxically accessible: his portraits of the great, whether they offer strange pyschological insights (Andropov’s withered right hand), vengeful irony ( W.H. Auden as a guerrilla fighter) or mere defacement (T. S. Eliot with a moustache), have the unusual effect of a sort of impartial satire’ – Mick Imlah in the Independent on Sunday ‘This little book . . . honours what in so many other ways Greene honoured in his long lifetime of writing: the value of mystery. It is that . . . that lifts it from the personal and the particular to a universal level of interest’ – William Trevor in the Spectator ‘Greene’s dream-world is recognizably a version of the world of his novels or, to put it another way, this book might be seen as his last exercise, slight but graceful and fetching, in the art of fiction – which is not to suggest that as a record it is the least untruthful’ – C. K. Stead in the London Review of Books ‘Enchanting, moving, touched by the remains of a faith that had pretty well vanished, but pervaded throughout by a compelling sense of fun’ – John Preston in the Sunday Telegraph