First published in 1935, Herbert Read’s only novel is a strange, powerful and original work: a sustained piece of political and philosophical fantasy. It tells the story of Dr Olivero, president of a small South American country, who fakes his own assassination and returns in disguise to the English village of his youth. Arriving late in the evening, he notices that the village stream appears to be running uphill. Intrigued, he follows the stream and comes across a lonely mill where he rescues the Green Child, a speechless creature with semi-transparent flesh, from her sadistic husband. She leads Olivero to the millstream’s source and plunges him into her strange, subterranean world.

Widely debated when it came out many generations ago, The Green Child is truly a masterpiece, a rare blend of fantasy and reality.

Herbert Read - Hebert Read was born in 1893, the son of a Yorkshire farmer, and educated at Leeds University until his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of war in 1914. He built his reputation as an outstanding critic of the arts, for which he was knighted, and as an anarchist poet. The Green Child is his only work of fiction. He died in 1968.

Graham Greene - Graham Greene OM, CH (1904 – 1991) was a prolific writer whose novels explored the inner and outer worlds of British Catholicism, espionage and international relations. He is probably best known to most people as the author of Brighton Rock, which was made into a hugely popular film starring the young Richard Attenborough.

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