In the Author’s Note to this 1971 edition of The Man Within, Graham Greene explains that after a first attempt to revise the original text for this edition, he gave up and decided to leave it exactly as it was originally. He calls the story “embarrassingly romantic”, the style “derivative” and says he gave up the revision after concluding that by doing so, he was eliminating perhaps the only quality it had, its youth. I disagree. Taking into account that Greene started writing this novel when he was not yet 22 and published it when he was 25, I can’t help but being amazed at how well he already wrote at such a young age. Yes, the story is too romantic, I would even say a bit melodramatic, but the great writing makes up for all that.