The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene first edition 1948

London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1948 
 
8vo., navy cloth lettered in silver to backstrip; upper edge red; in the original red publisher’s dustwrapper (9s 6d net); pp. [vi], 297, [i]; a very good copy, the spine a little crumpled; previous owner’s name in ink to ffep; a couple of very light spots to outer edge; in the very good jacket which is rubbed along folds, some shelf wear and dirtying, particular to the lower panel; front and rear flaps lightly spotted and browned; one long closed tear to rear flap (4cm long) now discretely repaired to verso with archival tape; some creasing and wear to spine ends, with a couple of small nicks and one small closed tear to head; a much nicer copy than is often found, together in the fragile dust wrapper. 
 
First edition. 
 
Greene’s twelfth novel was based on his own experiences in Sierra Leone, and later confirmed the location of the plot to be Freetown, the country’s capital. However, he takes great pains in his introduction to assert that no characters are based on living persons. Greene had been stationed in West Africa during the Second World War, after being recruited by M16 as an intelligence officer, and he notes that “I have a special reason for not wanting such characters in my book to be identified with real people, for I remember with very great gratitude the courtesy and consideration I received from the Colonial Secretary, the Commissioner of Police and their staff in the colony where I worked in 1942-43”. 
 
Often considered to be one of the author’s masterpieces, The Heart of the Matter follows protagonist Henry Scobie, an honourable police officer of modest means who finds himself on a downward spiral after beginning an affair with a younger woman. With themes of Colonialism, the limits of faith and the cost of morality, the novel is sometimes referred to as one of the works in Greene’s “Catholic trilogy” that included Greene’s Brighton Rock (1938) and The Power and the Glory (1940).
 
In an article for the New York Times subsequent to the novel’s publication, William du Bois writes that Greene: “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”. The book won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. 
 
“If one knew, he wondered, the facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? If one reached what they called the heart of the matter?"