One of the foremost writers of the 20th Century, Graham Greene managed to forge a career writing both intensely serious novels and lighter entertainment books. Throughout his life he worked as a journalist, raconteur and commentator. He also worked during World War II as a spy and gained fame as a screenwriter for the movie The Third Man. 
His best novels deal both with the age old issues of morality and religion and with decidedly 20th century themes of colonialism and totalitarianism.

Graham Henry Greene was born in Hertfordshire, England in 1904. A shy and sensitive child, Greene did not have a pleasant childhood; he didn’t fit in with schoolmates or participate in sports and was bullied because he was the school headmaster’s son. He attempted suicide a number of times and by 15, was already in therapy.
But his therapist saw a love of the written word in the young Greene and encouraged him to express himself through writing. He also introduced him to a circle of literary friends including Walter De La Mare.
Greene attended Balliol College, Oxford, but spent most his university years carousing and drinking. He did, however, land the job of Editor of the Oxford Outlook. Upon graduation in 1925, Greene took a job as a sub-editor at the Nottingham Journal. His experience of the seedy underworld of the midlands city would become the impetus of one his most famous novels, Brighton Rock.
The following year, he met Vivan Dayrell Browning, whom he would marry the following year and who would later become instrumental in urging Greene to become a Catholic.
In 192, Greene moved to London to take a job at The Times. He also completed a novel that was rejected by publishers. Undaunted, he continued writing and finally saw The Man Within published in 1929. Greene left The Times to begin writing full-time, but his next two works flopped and he was forced to return to journalism and work as a book reviewer for The Spectator. To make ends meet, he wrote Stambol Train an unabashed adventure thriller. It was a success and Greene realized the success of his “entertainments,” as he called them, would allow him to publish more literary but less financially successful “serious” novels.
The success of his thriller allowed Greene to begin traveling. A mix of wanderlust and research, Greene began visiting far- off places, initially Sweden and Liberia, and setting his novels in exotic and far-from-England locales. His exploits as a raconteur became as famous as his novels.
In 1938, Greene published Brighton Roc,k his most successful novel to-date, and still regarded as one of his best. Bu,t as he was enjoying his success, his part time career got him into hot water. One of his film reviews in Night and Day magazine suggested that child star Shirley Temple was acting in a way that would only appeal to old men and priests. The result was a libel suit that bankrupted the magazine and sent Greene scurrying out of the country lest the same fate befall him personally.
Greene escaped to Mexico ostensibly to avoid prosecution but also to witness firsthand the persecution of Catholics by the fascist regime of Plutarco Elías Calles.
The result of that trip was The Lawless Roads, a non-fiction account of the trip and what he witnessed, and the novel The Power and the Glory. Many consider that novel one of the finest of the 20th Century; a powerful meditation on religion, guilt, betrayal, oppression, colonialism and death, it won both plaudits from critics and condemnation from the Vatican.
During World War II, Greene worked for the Secret Intelligence Service in Sierra Leone. His experiences as an intelligence operative would be reflected in novels such as The Heart of the Matter, Our Man in Havana and The Quiet American.
Greene’s novels were extremely successful and he lived the high life in London. He was one of the mainstays of a literary circle that included T.S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, Ian Fleming and Noel Coward. He also continued to travel to the world’s trouble spots seeking material for his later novels Haiti for The Comedians and Argentina for The Honorary Consul for example.
In 1966 another scandal, this time over money, saw Greene fleeing to Antibes in the south of France. For 20 years he lived in France with his partner Yvonne Cloetta. In 1982, Greene published a short work called J'Accuse — The Dark Side of Nice, in which he described corruption in the city administration and police and the influence of organized crime. The result was another libel suit, which Greene lost. He was forced to leave the south of France, although a number of years later Greene’s accusations were finally proven to be true.
Finally retiring to Switzerland, Greene completed his last novel, Getting to Know the General in 2000 before dying the following year.

The Power and the Glory

Following his visit to Mexico and the State of Tabasco, Greene wanted to detail the persecution of Catholics in both non-fiction and fiction. The Lawless Roads was his non-fictional account and was published in 1938. Two yea’s later, The Power and the Glory was published.
The novel centers on an unnamed character simply known as “the whisky priest.” The priest is attempting to avoid persecution at the hands of the local government who want to rid the region of all Catholics.  While he is the only remaining Roman Catholic Priest in the region and is a danger to the state, he is hardly the epitome of a pious Catholic clergyman; he has fathered an illegitimate child, is a drunk and often charges for his services. While on the run, the priest attempts to absolve as many sinners as possible. The whisky priest, on the surface is a weak and despicable character, but as the novel wears on the reader becomes aware that he is simply a humble man struggling between the demands of his religion and the desires of his earthly body. 
The Lieutenant, another unnamed character, is on the trail of priest. A fired-up socialist devoted to social emancipation of the people, he sees the removal of all Catholics as one way to free the people, yet he sees no problem in using every method to track his prey including torture and murder.
The novel also features a number of other interesting characters, who flesh out the various sub themes of the novel.   
The Power and the Glory is broken up into four parts and explores issues such as faith, betrayal, death, sin, and piety. The short novel unfolds quickly as the hunter bears down on the hunted and finally climaxes when the whisky priest and lieutenant finally meet face to face. Their final dialogue details the complexity of religion and its state in the mid 20th century.