Fiction & other works · 1960 · novel

A Burnt-Out Case

by Graham Greene

A Burnt-Out Case (1960) is a novel by English author Graham Greene, set in a leper colony on the upper reaches of a tributary of the Congo River in Africa. Querry, a famous architect who is fed up with his celebrity, no longer finds meaning in art or pleasure in life. Arriving anonymously in the late 1950s at a Congo leper colony overseen by Catholic missionaries, he is diagnosed – by Dr Colin, the resident doctor who is himself an atheist – as the mental equivalent of a 'burnt-out case': a leper who has gone through the stages of mutilation. However, as Querry loses himself in working for the lepers, his disease of mind slowly approaches a cure. Querry meets Rycker, a palm-oil plantation owner, and a man of apparently earnest Catholic faith who does not accept his own nothingness and tries to amplify the relevance of Querry's presence in that country. Rycker's wife, a young and ill-educated woman, is absolutely bored with his prudishness and her own lack of freedom. It is revealed that Querry is a famous architect, known throughout the world for his design and construction of churches – which he himself believes have been defiled by the religious occupants. Querry...

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