Finished reading THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene. First published in 1948, this novel is set in the West African British colony of Sierra Leone during the Second World War. Green worked as a British Foreign Service Officer in Sierra Leone during 1941-43 and his experience there prompted the novel.
Its central character is Scobie, Deputy Commissioner of Police and a devout Catholic. He is in the colony 15 years already. He is honest and committed to maintaining order and justice. But he is in a loveless marriage that produced a daughter who died young.
Mrs Scobie feels unwanted in Sierra Leone and suggests to her husband that they go back to England or someplace else. He prefers to stay in Sierra Leone. Mrs Scobie asks him to send her to white-ruled South Africa for a vacation. He doesn’t have money and his bank rejected a loan request. He borrows the money from a notoriously corrupt Syrian businessman and later has to abandon his principles by abetting his benefactor in diamond smuggling and other illegal acts.
While his wife is in South Africa, Scobie starts a romantic relationship with a young widow and has constant pangs of guilt that torment his Catholic beliefs. A series of unfortunate events confront him and he says: “I carry suffering with me like a body smell.” All of which leads to a bad ending.
While reading this book I discovered the presence of West Indians in Sierra Leone. Curiously I googled and learned that in 1819 the British had deported Jamaican maroons and Barbadian rebels to that African colony, with Trinidadians following. In time those West Indians and their offspring became civil servants, journalists and other professionals there.
