Querry is a world-renowned architect noted for his magnificent churches, each designed not for the glory of God, but for the satisfaction of self. Suddenly infected with indifference, he has abandoned his pursuit of pleasure. Now he has reached the end of desire at the end of the world-a colony of lepers in the remote jungles of Africa.
Here, under the guidance of Doctor Colin, a fellow atheist, Querry's consideration of the sick could be something close to a cure for his own suffering. So too, it first seems, could a local plantation owner's lonely and abused wife-Querry's unlikely confessor. But when Querry reluctantly agrees to build a hospital and his good intentions brand him a modern-day saint, all the intrusive and dangerous piety of civilization returns. And this time it could be inescapable.
"A Burnt-Out Case is a fascinating study of the relationship of suffering, especially freely accepted suffering-to wholeness.... Free from the theological arrogance, the baiting of rationalists, the melodramatic use of attempted bargains with God which gave a peculiar edge and intensity to Greene's earlier religious fiction... a very appealing novel, wise, gentle and sympathetic."
The New York Times
"The most ingenious, inventive and exciting of our novelists, rich in exactly etched and moving portraits of real human beings... A master of storytelling."
V. S. Pritchett, The Times (London)
"In a class by himself... The ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety."
