Scobie, a Catholic, is consumed by guilt for his choices, though he cannot seem to extract himself from his dilemma. Greene excels at describing flawed individuals and their struggles. “He was touched by uneasiness, as though he had accidentally set in motion a powerful machine he couldn’t control.” He meets a young widow who reminds him of his deceased daughter. He borrows money from a corrupt individual to send her to South Africa, setting off a spiral of poor choices. He has recently been passed over for promotion. Published in 1948, this book is a psychological character study of Henry Scobie, a British police official living with his wife in Sierra Leone in 1942. “If I could just arrange for her happiness first, he thought, and in the confusing night he forgot for the while what experience had taught him-that no human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another’s happiness.”
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