A review by lucyb
A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene

4.0

I loved this book. It shows Graham Greene at his most incandescent and his most coruscating. This book, set primarily in an African leper hospital managed by French priests, offers a brilliant critique of imperialism, a compassionate look at the practice of medicine, and a moving, nuanced meditation on vocation. Querry, the "burnt-out case," comes to the hospital looking for nothing, and finds a richer and more diverse communal life than he's ever had before. The book isn't as tightly plotted as some of Greene's more famous works, but its cast of characters is remarkable, from the priests, to the hospital's warm-hearted, atheist doctor, to the married colonists in Luc, the perceptive leper Deo Gratias, and the grotesque English journalist. The book combines absurdity and insight in Greene's distinctive and beautiful idiom.