Of course, there are Graham Greene novels more refined in form and style than Burnt Paper; for example, the exciting “Power and Glory” with its unique combination of historiography and psychographics, or “The Essence of Things”, where an ancient tragedy sinks into the sticky thick. tropical humidity. However, it is this book, recently published by Polis, that introduces one of the most interesting characters not only to Green, but to all literature of the second half of the 20th century.

Keri, a famous architect in his homeland, arrives at a remote leper shelter belonging to a Catholic monastery, deep in the raging forests of the Belgian Congo. His goal is to escape from everyone and everything. His faith in divine and human love is irreparably shaken. His greatest desire is to live out his final days in relative peace before dying of despair. However, there, in the most unexpected place, he will meet a community capable of reviving his humanistic nature; among the crippled victims of leprosy, he will find that his own prowess is only apparent.

And the rest of the characters in the book, however, are masterfully completed. Doctor Colin, although an atheist, is the most moral and honest among them, but cannot enjoy the joys of life, which elude the notion of duty. On the other hand, a ruthless journalist for whom reality is relevant and interesting only if it can give him a convincing story. One of these is offered to him on a plate by Riker, a local landowner who is a devout Christian and cruel to those he considers beneath him.

Then European monks and African lepers, like two different dances of an ancient tragedy, conversing with the main characters and at the same time representing the opposite worlds that absurdly meet in a place so inhospitable to humans. As always with Green, the descriptions of nature and climate are unique—you can almost feel the still humid air of the tropics, hear the buzzing of mosquitoes, and see the sweat on people’s foreheads.

Apart from love and morality, which are the main themes here, the writer also wrestles with (his) art: “Does not a writer write for his readers? However, he must take some basic steps to make his readers feel good. I was interested in space, light, proportions. […] Materials are the architect’s tools. This is not his motivation for work, only space, light and proportions. The plot of the novel is not a plot. Who remembers what finally happened to Lucien de Ribabre? Keri watches at some point.

His own sense of submission is here transformed into a vague and paradoxical function; where almost everyone considers him a saint – because they need it – he reacts instinctively, trying to prove the exact opposite and in the end fails in this too. Holiness can have various “translations”, Green enigmatically observes his hero.