I really enjoyed it, and although i cannot find out why i thought it was a great insight into the lengths which people will go to get money but also how sadistically interested (doctor fisher) people can be. Haunting but brilliant. ( )

very sad.
i would have eaten the porridge. i like it! but not the bombs. that's for suicidal people.
i always think of greene being the 50s and 40s. so this was kind of a shock. ( )

Intruiguing nastiness, but heavy moralizing ( )

www.thebookpond.se ( )

Of the books I've read, this is as close as I've seen Greene come to emulating the enormous tragedy at the heart of Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms." Both books are about the same length - Greene's might be a little shorter - and about vastly different things, but both look at human corruption, at love, and end tragically.

Greene's is the lesser of the two, without a doubt, though it isn't without its own highlights. The tale of Dr Fischer is morally ambiguous. He hosts parties where he expects his guests to humiliate themselves, with a fabulously expensive gift their reward if they do. One guest, the narrator, who works as a translator in a chocolate factory, refuses to lower himself as others do so quickly; it is ironic - or morally the heart of the story - that the narrator needs the money, and the others do not. ( )