Mewshaw was an ambitious young journalist and novelist, Greene was an internationally revered elder statesman of letters. The pair became fast friends and corresponded for the next twenty years. My Man in Antibes is an intimate portrait of what it was like to eat, drink, and gossip with one of the most reveredโand complicatedโauthors of the twentieth century.
Growing up Catholic with literary aspirations, Mewshaw believed Greene was the author to emulate. When Mewshaw tracked down Greene in Antibes, he found the author was far from a reclusive, close-mouthed figure: Greene garrulously recounted tales about the many women in his lifeโand husbands of those womenโas well as his extraordinary interviews with political figures such as Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh.
Over the next two decades, Mewshaw and Greene ate meals together, discussed their travels, and talked about writers they knew in common, such as Anthony Burgess, Shirley Hazzard, and Gore Vidal.
While young Mewshaw looked up to the world-weary Greene, their relationship was never simply that of mentor and mentee. A rare, firsthand look at the one of the 20th century's greatest authors. The humanity of a renowned literary figure is fascinatingly revealed through a long friendship.
Graham Green was calculatedly elusive, but Michael Mewshaw has given us a glimpse behind the altar at the man divested of his vestments. Wonderfully entertaining. This elegant account of decades of often warm, sometimes prickly companionship offers fascination, revelation, laughter, and ultimately pathos. A beautiful memoir of parallel lives, My Man in Antibes kept me turning pages into the wee hours, crisp glass of gin at my side. Here he combines and contrasts the remarkable story of his deprived upbringing with that of an older and already established Catholic writer: Graham Greene.
