The Collected Novels, Volume Two: The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American, and The Power and the Glory

This collection features three classic novels that explore Graham Greene's most important themes: Catholicism, international intrigue, and the never-ending struggle to know oneself. The Heart of the Matter: In a British colony of West Africa, Henry Scobie is a pious man of modest means charged with securing borders. But when he's passed over for a promotion, the humiliation hits hard-for his wife. To make it up to her, Henry accepts a loan from a black marketeer to secure Louise's passage out of Africa. His single indiscretion quickly leads him-one moral compromise after another-into a web of blackmail, adultery, and murder. The Quiet American: Vietnam, 1955. British journalist Thomas Fowler is covering the insurgency against French colonial rule and doing what he can to protect his Vietnamese lover, Phuong. Alden Pyle of the CIA believes in bringing American democracy to Vietnam by any means necessary. But when his ideas of conquest come to include Phuong, pride, passion, and blind moral conviction collide with terrible consequences. The Power and the Glory: In 1930s Tabasco, Mexico, Catholicism is being outlawed. As churches are razed and devotees are executed, a member of the clergy known only as the "whisky priest" flees. He now travels as one of the hunted-attending, in secret, to the spiritual needs of the faithful. When a peasant begs him to return to Tabasco to hear the confessions of a dying man, the whisky priest knows it's a trap. But it's also his duty-and possibly his salvation.