"A policeman's lot is not a happy one. The white (and dark) man's burden must always be heavy. And man's debt to man will be forever in arrears -- from West Africa to the West End, from Brooklyn to Bucharest. Generations of novelists have wrestled with these melancholy truisms. It is a pleasure to report that Graham Greene, in 'The Heart of the Matter,' has wrestled brilliantly with all three -- and scored three clean falls. Mr. Greene (as a well-earned public knows) is a profound moralist with a technique to match his purpose. From first page to last, this record of one man's breakdown on a heat-drugged fever-coast makes its point as a crystal-clear allegory -- and as an engrossing novel. Mr. Greene has chosen a carefully unnamed spot on Africa's coastline as his backdrop: we are told merely that it adjoins Vichy-held territory across one of its sluggish, tan-colored rivers, that the time is the wrong end of World War II. ..."
NY Times (July 1948)
W - The Heart of the Matter
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