Ratings1
Average rating4.5
Focusing on a British police officer in an unnamed West African colony, this novel attempts to show, along with the socially restricted lives of colonists in Africa, the effects of sin on a devout catholic. After sending his unhappy wife to South Africa at her request the officer begins an affair with a young woman, a survivor of a shipwreck and now widowed but is unable to end the relationship when his wife returns even though he feels he is committing a mortal sin.
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Greene appears obsessed with relatively trivial matters of the heart - his little affairs, adultry, unfairness to his snobby wife and his Catholic guilt, yet ignores the real heart of darkness in West Africa - the evils of colonialism and the trans-atlantic slave trade, which do not warrant even a passing mention.