THE HEART OF THE MATTER.
New York: The Viking Press, 1948. Original grey and antique-rose cloth, with dust jacket.
First American Edition of Greene's first post-war novel, portraying the moral crisis of a good man "increasingly enmeshed in love, in intrigue, and in evil" (per the jacket), while serving as a wartime British colonial police officer in a West African capital. In 1942-1943 Greene himself had served in Freetown, Sierra Leone, as an MI6 intelligence officer -- under the later-to-be-notorious double agent Kim Philby.
This is a fine, virtually as-new copy (bookplate on the front free endpaper); included is the dust jacket, essentially without wear or soil and still bearing the printed $3.00 price (one very faint small mark at the top of the front panel). Immensely popular upon publication, this novel was #40 on Modern Library's list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century. Item #14576
Price: $950.00