The Man Within My Head Graham Greene, My Father and Me

He has written the work that those who love Greene (as I do) have dreamt of writing and, in doing it so well, absolved us of the need ... Humbling and moving ... The Man Within My Head is one of a handful of magical books that I have read straight through Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph There are three men in this virtuoso memoir: Iyer comes to a better understanding of himself, the virtual man in his head and, movingly, the lifetime bond with his real father Iain Finlayson, The Times A personal and passionate book ... Captivating and intelligent ... An eloquent and intelligent investigation into fathers and sons. It is a book that contains travel anecdotes, personal memoirs, literary criticism and, yes, biography and autobiography. And yet the result is none of the above, being instead one of those hard to categorise books that publishers resist, booksellers puzzle over but readers will surely love Observer Iyer is good on Greene's ambivalence towards faith and its relation to his own darkness ... He's good too on Greene's strange prissiness John Preston, Sunday Telegraph In pages of elegant prose, Iyer acknowledges "Grim Grin" (as Kingsley Amis called him) as a father figure and "secret confidant" ... In a wonderful chapter, Iyer reflects on the importance of dentists in Greene. Perhaps the dentist is really another kind of priest, who administers suffering as a way of keeping "deeper suffering at bay" Ian Thomson, Sunday Times A Vividly unusual memoir ... generous, thoughtful, without ego, the book I wish I'd written ... Achieves a truly hard task, to make the writer's mediation become the reader's -- Julian Evans Independent Those who relish the discipline of trying to understand the human condition through the exercise of the imagination will fine this an exceptionally elegant and eloquent essay -- Jane Shilling New Statesman It is not only compellingly readable, but as telling about Greene as any biography yet published -- Maggie Fergusson Economist In his guise of travel writer, Iyer has really been out most elegant poet of dislocation ... This is a literary bond - the dense and fraught relationship that can grow, almost unbidden, between reader and writer - but it is not just that. Through Greene's writing, Iyer accesses Greene himself, delivering to us a thoughtful and exquisitely rendered portrait of him -- Samantha Subramanian Guardian The laurel for the most charming and original biography-cum-memoir goes to Pico Iyer Daily Telegraph