At 19, I was obsessed with a man I did not know. Graham Greene’s novels were among the works prescribed for my Master’s degree. My admiration for Greene’s writing was clouded by irritation with critical assessments that labelled Greene a “Catholic” novelist (along with Evelyn Waugh). These analyses, often misguided, I believed, by highly structured theological arguments, diminished and even erased the tragic dimensions of our lives and world.
Greene’s skills as a novelist were underpinned by his deep sense of the human condition even in novels he labelled “entertainments”. The dogmas of Catholicism emphasised moral choices to govern our lives. Sin, guilt and redemption – a package unequivocally central to a Catholic view of the world – helped focus on reality: extreme poverty, persecution, love and its betrayal, capitalism, political leaders and their misuse of power. “Where do these critics live?” he once asked, perhaps referring to Pinkie in…