It's a Battlefield

Name: It's a Battlefield
Brand: Tantor Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: Graham Greene
ISBN: 9798350816280

Author: Graham Greene

Narrator: Graham Mack

Unabridged: 8 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/15/2023

Categories: Fiction, Classic, Mystery & Detective, Police Procedural

Synopsis

An "adventurous . . . intelligent . . . ingenious" novel of crime and punishment in pre–World War II London (V. S. Pritchett).

During a demonstration in Hyde Park, Communist bus driver Jim Drover acts on instinct to protect his wife by stabbing to death the policeman set to strike her down. Sentenced to hang—whether as a martyr, tool, or murderer—Drover accepts his lot, unaware that the ramifications for the crime, and the battle for his reprieve, are inflaming political unrest in an increasingly divided city. But Drover's single, impulsive act is also upending the lives of the people he loves and trusts. Caught in a quicksand of desperation, sexual betrayal, and guilt, they will not only play a part in Drover's fate, but they'll become agents—both unwitting and calculated—of their own fates as well.

Turning the traditional narrative of the police procedural, domestic drama, and political thriller on its head, It's a Battlefield was described by Graham Greene himself as "a panoramic novel of London," one without heroes and villains, only "the injustice of man's justice."

About Graham Greene

Graham Greene (1904-1991) is recognized as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century, achieving both literary acclaim and popular success. His best-known works include Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American, and The Power and the Glory. After leaving Oxford, Greene first pursued a career in journalism before dedicating himself full-time to writing with his first big success, Stamboul Train. He became involved in screenwriting and wrote adaptations for the cinema as well as original screenplays, the most successful being The Third Man. Religious, moral, and political themes are at the root of much of his work, and throughout his life he traveled to some of the wildest and most volatile parts of the world, which provided settings for his fiction. Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour.

Reviews

Goodreads review by J.C.

Having been reminded of this book by my GR friend Zoeb, I took it down from the shelf, thinking that it was a Greene I hadn’t read. I had, though, many years ago. Something of it came back to me as I read it, probably the fashionableness of early communism in ‘thirties London, as there is nothing in......more

Goodreads review by Nigeyb

Graham Greene described It's a Battlefield (1934) as his first overtly political novel. The novel explores the intersecting lives of those close to Drover, a communist bus driver, who knifed a policeman in order to stop him from striking Drover's wife. The action all takes place in the days before D......more