A Burnt-Out Case

A famous architect struggling with a crisis of faith escapes to a leper colony in the Congo, in Graham Greene’s “greatest novel” (Time).

Querry is a world-renowned architect noted for his magnificent churches, each designed not for the glory of God, but for the satisfaction of self. Suddenly infected with indifference, he has abandoned his pursuit of pleasure. Now he has reached the end of desire at the end of the world—a colony of lepers in the remote jungles of Africa.

Here, under the guidance of Doctor Colin, a fellow atheist, Querry’s consideration of the sick could be something close to a cure for his own suffering. So too, it first seems, could a local plantation owner’s lonely and abused wife—Querry’s unlikely confessor. But when Querry reluctantly agrees to build a hospital and his good intentions brand him a modern-day saint, all the intrusive and dangerous piety of civilization returns. And this time it could be inescapable.

From “the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety” comes Graham Greene’s celebrated novel about the consequences of conviction, the sickness of the soul, and the tenuous endurance of the human spirit (William Golding).