Though other great romantic books such as Gone with the Wind, Pride and Prejudice or Jane Eyre deal with the interplay between love and hate, The End of the Affair does so more openly. Passionate and cerebral, its prose meticulously mirrors the mind of its narrator. The novel enlarges the reader's understanding of love, a word which really should be divided into 20 subdivisions - most of which the novel explores. The book is more powerful than the film partly because Ralph Fiennes looks too much the part of the romantic hero, whereas the character he plays, Maurice Bendrix, is an anti-hero, calculating, jealous, malicious and savage. It is one of the most forensic and honest analyses of love you will ever read. Previously she was an editor at the New York Review of Books.Great romantic novels are about pain and hate, and among the greatest is Graham Greene's searing The End of the Affair. Laura Marsh is the literary editor of The New Republic and co-host of the podcast “The Politics of Everything.” She has written for The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Dissent, The Times Literary Supplement, and Literary Review. Subscribe now on iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Android, Stitcher, or wherever else you find your podcasts! In this episode, Jacke talks to Laura Marsh about the enduring appeal of The End of the Affair. The result was one of the most powerful, suspenseful, and moving novels of all time. After several tumultuous years (“grotesquely complicated” was how he described his personal life), he sat down to record his feelings about one lover in particular, the wealthy (and married) American heiress, Catherine Walston. His marriage was on the rocks, his soul was struggling to find its home, and his restless spirit had taken him into the bedrooms of multiple women. In the aftermath of World War II, author Graham Greene was in personal and professional agony. How did literature develop? What forms has it taken? And what can we learn from engaging with these works today? Hosted by Jacke Wilson, an amateur scholar with a lifelong passion for literature, The History of Literature takes a fresh look at some of the most compelling examples of creative genius the world has ever known.

We know it today as literature, a term broad enough to encompass everything from ancient epic poetry to contemporary novels. Four thousand years ago they began writing down these stories, and a great flourishing of human achievement began.

For tens of thousands of years, human beings have been using fictional devices to shape their worlds and communicate with one another.

The end of the affair by graham greene