Eines der besten Bücher eines der besten Autoren. Und eine wunderbare Passage, die den Charakter des Erzählers in wenigen Worten skizziert.

I doubt if one ever ceases to love, but one can cease to be in love as easily as one can outgrow an author one admired as a boy. The memory of my wife faded quickly enough and it was not constancy which stopped me from looking for another wife – to have found one woman who accepted me as a lover in spite of my plastic imitation of a hand and my unattractive income had been a near miracle, and I couldn’t expect a miracle like that to be repeated. When the necessity to have a woman became imperative I could always buy a copulation, even in Switzerland, after I had found my employment in the chocolate factory to augment my pension and the little which I had inherited from my parents (very little it was, but as their capital had been invested in War Loan, at least it paid no English tax).

Grahame Greene, Doctor Fischer of Geneva and the bomb party, London 1980, 12 f.