The Heart of the Matter

When I read a book from a distinguished writer or otherwise for the first time I notice things particular to the author's style or mood. Has he an agenda, does he want to preach or just entertain. How well can he or she communicate with the reading audience, does the author care that much. Will peop......more

Very strong, Very Greene. The comic touch always lurks on the edge of his major works - even here, a West African coastal colony town during World War 2, where British officers have regressed into a sort of juvenile madness. The novel is stifling, claustrophobic, and yet lightly rendered, as a polic......more

This book is a classic "colonial novel." We are immediately immersed in the British colonial tropics - an unnamed British colony in West Africa during World War II. Cockroaches, rats and diseases abound. The British colony shares a border with a Vichy French (German-allied) colonial country so there......more

"Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his......more