The Third Man by Graham Greene is one of the incredible eight (8!) novels that this fantastic author has on The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, The Third Man is ranked 840th on The Greatest Books of All Time site – hundreds of those works and films are reviewed on the blog I am promoting now, the best gig there is https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html though you may disagree

 

The Third Man by Graham Greene is one of the incredible eight (8!) novels that this fantastic author has on The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, The Third Man is ranked 840^th on The Greatest Books of All Time site – hundreds of those works and films are reviewed on the blog I am promoting now, the best gig there is https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html though you may disagree

 

 9 out of 10

 

Graham Greene was one of the greatest novelists, and one of the proofs has been mentioned above, eight of his magnum opera are ‘must read material’, most of those are ‘analyzed’ by yours truly  https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-power-and-glory-by-graham-greene-is.html not that this will benefit anyone

 

Here is what Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis had to say about Graham Greene: ‘this last is very good: the trouble with the man is that he has no sense of humor’ that may be disputed, for together with dramas, such as the intense The Power and The Glory, you find Travels with My Aunt, which is hilarious at times

The Third Man however is in the tragic register, though many of the things happening seem extracted from a vaudeville, I mean the death of Harry Lime is not just suspicious, but the characters involved act as if they were comedians, or else, members of the administration of Orange Woland, or our local presumed leader

 

We have had elections yesterday, and the result could not be worse, we except someone like the ‘very stable genius’ to take the helm soon – but let us forget this grim outlook and get back to Harry Lime and The Third Man – Holly Martins arrives in Vienna, just after World War II, a period of crisis, shortages, abuses

He finds that his friend, Harry Lime, has just died, he goes to the funeral and then finds some details that make the whole thing tragicomic, because Baron Kurz explains about the accident, how the deceased had been hit by a truck, he took the victim with another friend – Popescu, who came from my country – to a monument nearby

 

Doctor Winkel, who happened to be the dead man’s physician, was passing and all the circumstances are incredible, only friends, the personal medic, and then even the truck was driven by the chauffeur of the victim, what is this, wonders Holly Martins for good reason, and when he tries to understand, it gets murkier

The doorman from the building heard the accident, the brakes, and then saw three men carrying Harry away, from a higher floor, and hence the mystery and the name of the novel, The Third Man, who does not surface, despite the efforts of the amateur detective, who tries to find the woman who was present at the interment

 

Anna Schmidt is an actress, she was the lover of the departed, and she gets into trouble, as she tries to help with this informal investigation – Vienna is at this stage divided between the allies, and the Soviets want to get her, she had a false passport, in order to escape them, we know what they did, and still do in Ukraine now

We find with Holly Martins that Harry Lime was not the irreproachable character we thought he was, indeed, it is the opposite, he had been involved in the vilest of trades, he would have an accomplice steal penicillin from hospitals, diluted and then sell if for exorbitant prices – incidentally, this is what happens just a few meters from me

 

This fellow had a company selling disinfectants (the ones Orange Woland claimed cure covid) but they were so absent from what he sold, that infections killed hundreds of people – now for Harry, he was a serial killer in other words, though he did not use direct violence, and there is surprise that readers have when…

He comes back to life – a spoiler alert might have been redundant, who reads all the way to the end – as in he had not died, they just buried somebody else instead and this becomes a race to get him, and hear the infamous quote about the Swiss and the Borgias…

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’