A study of Graham Greene's fiction from the perspective of ethics and community, focusing on the narrative pattern that emerges from the author's idiosyncratic use of keywords like peace, despair, compassion or commitment. This book explores their potential for the textual articulation of narrative conflict and the dramatization of the ethical.

'Overall the book offers a remarkable account of the way Greene's work conveys complex ethical issues within a crystalline and compelling narrative structure and in a literary discourse that is simultaneously accessible, sophisticated and individual... a brilliant piece of work.' - Neil R. Sinyard, University of Hull, UK