Key themes
- Love as obsession — and the hatred that love becomes when it is lost
- The bargain with God — and what happens when it is honoured
- The God who is an intruder in a secular life
About this book
Maurice Bendrix, a novelist, has an intense affair with the wife of a civil servant that ends mysteriously — without explanation — in wartime London. Years later, obsession and jealousy drive him to discover why. Greene's most personal novel is about love, hate and the possibility of religious faith arriving through the most unexpected door.
Published in 1951, The End of the Affair is based on Greene's own affair with Lady Catherine Walston. Greene was a Catholic convert and the novel is his most direct engagement with religious faith as a lived experience.
Discussion questions
- Maurice Bendrix narrates from within his obsession — he hates Sarah almost as much as he loved her. How does Greene show this consuming emotional state — and does it make Bendrix a reliable narrator of Sarah's story?
- The discovery of Sarah's diary is the novel's formal pivot. How does this revelation change the emotional dynamic — and what does it say about what Bendrix failed to understand?
- The novel is explicitly about religious faith — specifically, the unexpected arrival of Catholic belief. How does Greene make this conversion psychologically plausible rather than didactic?
- Greene called this his most personal novel. What does the autobiographical resonance add — and what does fiction give him that memoir could not?
- The End of the Affair is Greene's most discussed serious novel. How does it relate to The Quiet American and Brighton Rock — and what is he returning to across these very different books?
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