Frequently excluded from lists of his major works, Graham Greene’s The Ministry of Fear is often classified as genre fiction, in this case as a spy novel. Such a classification held little literary significance in Greene’s time, despite the example of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1907), John Buchan’s Greenmantle (1915) and Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden (1928). However, Greene’s “entertainments” — notably including the highly perceptive Vietnam-novel The Quiet American (1955) and the comic Our Man in Havana (1958) — raised the status of the spy novel through the blending of his fine storytelling prowess with astute commentary on the geopolitical state of the world. Tracy Lee Simmons of the National Review characterized Graham Greene as writing “thrillers for thinkers” and as “the most paradoxical man of twentieth-century literature” (43-44) and these remarks seems particularly relevant...
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Citation: Gonzalez, Christopher. "The Ministry of Fear: An Entertainment". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 January 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23517, accessed 09 June 2026.]
