Read this about a year ago with little comprehension.
So the plot is: Querry, a successful and celebrity architect turns up in a Catholic leper colony in darkest Africa, if not the Congo or somewhere similar.
He has achieved everything he wants to and flees yet another unsuccessful love affair hoping to lose himself in anonymity. But his fame precedes him and anonymity is impossible.
One of his acolytes, the fairly odious Ryker insists on Querry’s acquaintance and his child wife decides that he is the father of her unborn child. The jealous Ryker shoots Querry, bringing him the death he probably wanted.
Interesting to write a book about a man’s final months, and just hint at his background. Most writers would have written a fictional autobiography of Querry with rise, success and fall but Greene is Greene.
Remains difficult and imbued with Catholicism and metaphysical questions, but worth a re-read.
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