Fiction & other works · 1990 · story collection

The Last Word and Other Stories

by Graham Greene

"The Last WordThe Last Word" is Greene's final short story, before his death from leukaemia in 1991. The story revolves around the last Pope, John XXIX, who was overthrown more than twenty years earlier with the establishment of a new world government under General Megrim. The pope is now a frail old man, who lives in obscurity under a moderate form of house arrest, ignored by his neighbours and forbidden to keep any religious items. All he has left is a book, possibly a Bible, that he has managed to hide, and a crucifix with an arm broken off. He is already feeble-minded and has forgotten most of his past, and the world has forgotten him as well—when the concierge at a hotel is told that he is the pope, he answers...

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