"A Burnt-Out Case" by Graham Greene (1960)

"Suddenly the passenger found himself unable any longer not to speak.  He said, 'Nor I.  I suffer from nothing.  I no longer know what suffering is.  I have come to an end of all that too.'"

Graham Greene was an English novelist who reached his date of expiration in 1991.  I have read several of his novels, and also the non-fiction Journey Without Maps. 

In A Burnt-Out Case, a famous man travels to a leper colony in Africa, hoping to "retire from the world."  He quickly finds that his fame has followed him to even that remote location, and complications quickly result.

I liked the book, but not as much as other books by the same author.  At times it tries too hard to make a point, and certain conversations seem more like overt attempts to inject a theme into the novel, rather than natural outgrowths of a situation happening in real time.  The end of the novel also feels more like a play, and one gets the feeling that Greene wasn't quite sure how to end the story.

It's not as revelatory as either Journey Without Maps or The End of the Affair, but A Burnt-Out Case is worth reading if you've already exhausted Greene's more popular novels.  It bears some strong similarities to The Quiet American (a love triangle, whites living in the midst of non-whites, doomed idealists vs. equally doomed pragmatists), but it's still a good novel when taken on its own merits.