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30 August 2010

Tim Butcher retreads Greene's Journey Without Maps



On 2nd September 2010 Vintage Classics will publish a new edition of Graham Greene's Journey Without Maps (1936) with a foreword by Tim Butcher (above) and an introduction by Paul Theroux. Copies will be available for purchase at the bookstall at the Graham Greene International Festival in Berkhamsted (UK) in October 2010.

In 1935 Greene set off to discover Liberia, a remote and unfamiliar West African republic founded for released slaves. Crossing the red-clay terrain from Sierra Leone to the coast at Grand Bassa with a chain of porters, the writer came to know one of the few areas of Africa untouched by Western colonisation. In A Preface to Greene (Longman, 1997) Prof. Cedric Watts describes Greene's travel book Journey Without Maps as “interesting, perceptive, vivid, odd”, and he notes “the intense and discriminating interest that Greene took in the diversity of Africans whom he encountered, [and] particularly his considerate treatment of the various carriers and his compassionate concern for the sufferings he observed”.

Tim Butcher has been following Greene's trail in West Africa, and on the morning of Saturday 2nd October 2010 at the Festival he will give the annual talk on New Research on Graham Greene. His title will be “Chasing The Devil – How Greene Lost His Heart To West Africa”. More details of his talk appear on the Blog posted on 26th May 2010 and on the Festival website.

Formerly a correspondent with The Daily Telegraph, Mr. Butcher’s most recent writing includes Blood River: A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart (2007) and Chasing the Devil (to be published in 2010). Blood River is a compelling account of an African country now virtually inaccessible to the outside world in what is perhaps one of the most daring and adventurous journeys a journalist has made in recent years.

On 7th October 2010 Vintage Classics will also release a new edition of Greene’s The Power and the Glory (1940) with notes for reading groups.

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