Graham Greene, A Burnt-Out Case

Joe Nordgren (Lamar University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1960

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

In September 1958, Greene began pursuing the idea for a novel about a stranger who unexpectedly shows up at a remote leper colony overseen by a religious order. To this end, he contacted his Belgian friend Baroness Lambert and sought her help in regard to spending several weeks in the heart of Equatorial Africa. On 3 February 1959, he arrived at the Leprosy Centre at Yonda and began framing the background material for A Burnt-Out Case (1960). In his dedication of the book to Dr. Lechat, Greene writes: “This is not a roman a clef, but an attempt to give dramatic expression to various types of belief, half-belief, and non-belief, in the kind of setting removed from world politics and household-preoccupations, where …

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2469 words

Citation: Nordgren, Joe. "A Burnt-Out Case". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 January 2008 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13312, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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