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Heart of the Matter, The
New York: The Viking Press, 1948. Item #06489
Greene’s Dark Masterpiece of Conscience and Damnation
Duty, Despair, and the Burden of Moral Choice
GREENE, Graham. The Heart of the Matter. New York: The Viking Press, 1948.
First American edition. Octavo (8 x 5 3/8 inches; 203 x 127 mm.). [xii], [1-2], 3-306, [2, blank] pp.
Publisher's quarter gray cloth over red cloth boards, front cover decorated in light green, spine ruled and lettered in red, original printed dust jacket. A near fine copy.
One of Graham Greene’s most profound and enduring novels, The Heart of the Matter stands at the center of his sequence of so-called “Catholic novels,” and is widely regarded as among his greatest achievements.
Set in a British colonial outpost in West Africa during the Second World War, the novel follows Major Henry Scobie, a police officer whose rigid sense of duty and compassion leads him into a tragic moral crisis.
Greene’s exploration of sin, pity, and responsibility is rendered with extraordinary psychological depth. Scobie’s attempts to reconcile his obligations - to his wife, his lover, his faith, and his own conscience - result in an inexorable descent toward despair.
The novel’s power lies in its refusal to offer easy judgments, instead presenting a world in which virtue and weakness are inextricably intertwined.
Praised upon publication for its emotional intensity and moral seriousness, the book remains a defining work of twentieth-century literature. Greene himself considered it among his finest novels, and it continues to resonate as a haunting study of the limits of human integrity and the complexities of belief.
Price: $450.00