SOURCE: "Graham Greene: The Short Stories," in Graham Greene: A Revaluation: New Essays, edited by Jeffrey Meyers, The Macmillan Press, 1990, pp. 93-103.

In the essay below, Bayley provides a thematic and stylistic overview of Greene's short stories.

"The Miracle of Purun Bhagat" is a story by Kipling that comes at the end of The Jungle Book, and Graham Greene thought it his best. It is not hard to see why. An Indian administrator in the British Raj, of such high rank that he has had bestowed on him the rare honour of a knighthood, abandons his former way of life to become a hermit in the Himalayas. One night in the Rains the animals come past his hut, having lost all fear of men, and he realizes that a big landslide is on the way. All his old instincts of responsibility return, and he warns and saves the...