The Man Within

The “strikingly original” debut novel by the masterful British author is “a perfect adventure” of love and smuggling on the English coast (The Nation).

Francis Andrews is a reluctant smuggler living in the shadow of his brutish father’s legacy. To exorcise the ghosts of the man he loathes, Andrews betrays his colleagues to authorities and takes flight across the downs. It’s here that he stumbles upon the isolated cottage of a beguiling stranger named Elizabeth—an empathetic young woman who is just as lonely, every bit the outsider as he, and reconciling a troubling past of her own. Andrews, a man on the run from those he exposed, believes he’s found refuge and salvation. But when Elizabeth encourages him to return to the courts of Lewes and give evidence against his accomplices, the treacherous and deadly repercussions may be beyond their control.

“The ultimate strengths of [Graham] Greene’s books is that he shows us the hazards of compassion,” a theme that would find its earliest expression in The Man Within, his first published novel (Pico Iyer).