The End of the Affair

Author: Graham Greene

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2004

Description: "This is a record of hate far more than of love," writes Maurice Bendrix in the opening passages of The End of the Affair. And it is a strange hate indeed that compels him to set down the retrospective account of his adulterous affair with Sarah Miles -- a hate bred of a passion that ultimately lost out to God. Now, a year after Sarah's death, Bendrix seeks to exorcise the persistence of that passion by retracing its course from obsessive love to love hate. At the start he believes he hates Sarah and her husband, Henry. By the end of the book, Bendrix's hatred has shifted to the God he feels has broken his life but whose existence he has at last come to recognize. Originally published in 1951, The End of the Affair was acclaimed by William Faulkner as "for me one of the best, most true and moving novels of my time, in anybody's language." This Graham Greene Centennial Edition includes a new introductory essay by Michael Gorra.