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The Heart of the Matter: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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The Heart of the Matter: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) Paperback - 2004

by Greene, Graham

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Details

  • Title The Heart of the Matter: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
  • Author Greene, Graham
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Reprint
  • Condition New
  • Pages 288
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Penguin Group, New York
  • Date 2004-09-28
  • Features Bibliography, Maps
  • Bookseller's Inventory # 5D4000009BQ9_ns
  • ISBN 9780142437995 / 0142437999
  • Weight 0.71 lbs (0.32 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.3 x 5.72 x 0.78 in (21.08 x 14.53 x 1.98 cm)
  • Ages 18 to UP years
  • Grade levels 13 - UP
  • Themes
    • Religious Orientation: Christian
  • Library of Congress subjects Psychological fiction, Married people
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2004275122
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

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About this book

Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, set in an unnamed West African colony towards the end of World War II, is loosely based on the author’s own experience as a British intelligence officer in Sierra Leone. The novel’s protagonist, Henry Scobie, struggles to make his miserable wife happy. In the process, Scobie begins to wonder if any individual can truly make another happy, resulting in a life-changing moral crisis.

The Heart of the Matter, an insightful exploration of pity, suffering, religion, and responsibility, quickly became extremely popular, having sold more than 300,000 copies upon publication. The novel was critically acclaimed and received many favorable reviews. In 1948, The Heart of the Matter was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and it was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black awardees in 2012. The novel is ranked 40th on Modern Library’s “100 Best” English-language novels of the 20th century and is also listed on TIME’s “100 Best Novels” (since 1923).

Summary

“Wilson sat on the balcony of the Bedford Hotel with his bald pink knees thrust against the ironwork..."

 

Graham Greene's masterpiece The Heart of the Matter tells the story of a good man enmeshed in love, intrigue, and evil in a West African coastal town. Scobie is bound by strict integrity to his role as assistant police commissioner and by severe responsibility to his wife, Louise, for whom he cares with a fatal pity.

 

When Scobie falls in love with the young widow Helen, he finds vital passion again yielding to pity, integrity giving way to deceit and dishonor—a vortex leading directly to murder. As Scobie's world crumbles, his personal crisis makes for a novel that is suspenseful, fascinating, and, finally, tragic.

 

Originally published in 1948, The Heart of the Matter is the unforgettable portrait of one man, flawed yet heroic, destroyed and redeemed by a terrible conflict of passion and faith. This Penguin Deluxe Edition features an introduction by James Wood.


From the publisher

Graham Greene (1904-1991), whose long life nearly spanned the length of the twentieth century, was one of its greatest novelists. Educated at Berkhamsted School and Balliol College, Oxford, he started his career as a sub-editor of the London Times. He began to attract notice as a novelist with his fourth book, Orient Express, in 1932. In 1935, he trekked across northern Liberia, his first experience in Africa, told in A Journey Without Maps (1936). He converted to Catholicism in 1926, an edifying decision, and reported on religious persecution in Mexico in 1938 in The Lawless Roads, which served as a background for his famous The Power and the Glory, one of several “Catholic” novels (Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair). During the war he worked for the British secret service in Sierra Leone; afterward, he began wide-ranging travels as a journalist, which were reflected in novels such as The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, The Comedians, Travels with My Aunt, The Honorary Consul, The Human Factor, Monsignor Quixote, and The Captain and the Enemy. As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, two books of autobiography, A Sort of Life and Ways of Escape, two biographies, and four books for children. He also contributed hundreds of essays and film and book reviews to The Spectator and other journals, many of which appear in the late collection Reflections. Most of his novels have been filmed, including The Third Man, which the author first wrote as a film treatment. Graham Greene was named Companion of Honour and received the Order of Merit among numerous other awards.

First Edition Identification

William Heinemann first published The Heart of the Matter in London in 1948. Bound in dark blue cloth, the 297-page first edition states “First Published 1948” on the copyright page with no additional printings listed. The original dust jack is red with darkened corners and white text. 

Categories

Media reviews

Citations

  • Library Journal, 10/15/2004, Page 99

About the author

Graham Greene (1904-1991), whose long life nearly spanned the length of the twentieth century, was one of its greatest novelists. Educated at Berkhamsted School and Balliol College, Oxford, he started his career as a sub-editor of The Times of London. He began to attract notice as a novelist with his fourth book, Orient Express, in 1932. In 1935, he trekked across northern Liberia, his first experience in Africa, recounted in A Journey Without Maps (1936). He converted to Catholicism in 1926, an edifying decision, and reported on religious persecution in Mexico in 1938 in The Lawless Roads, which served as a background for his famous The Power and the Glory, one of several "Catholic" novels (Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair). During the war he worked for the British secret service in Sierra Leone; afterward, he began wide-ranging travels as a journalist, which were reflected in novels such as The Quiet American, Our Man in Havana, The Comedians, Travels with My Aunt, The Honorary Consul, The Human Factor, Monsignor Quixote, and The Captain and the Enemy. In addition to his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, two books of autobiography--A Sort of Life and Ways of Escape--two biographies, and four books for children. He also contributed hundreds of essays and film and book reviews to The Spectator and other journals, many of which appear in the late collection Reflections. Most of his novels have been filmed, including The Third Man, which the author first wrote as a film treatment. Graham Greene was named Companion of Honour and received the Order of Merit among numerous other awards.

James Wood is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a visiting lecturer at Harvard, and the author of the national bestseller How Fiction Works and the novel The Book Against God. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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