The closest parallel in Greene's earlier work to The Captain and the Enemy is The Quiet American, although in that novel the political theme is primary. In that story, the narrator tries to remain uninvolved in the turmoil in Viet Nam, but he is finally forced to take a side, partially because of his love for a Vietnamese woman. In this novel, the Captain seems to get involved in politics only for the money and makes his political sacrifice only when the woman he loves is dead.

This greater emphasis on the personal rather than the political is a direction Greene's writing has taken as he has gotten older (Greene himself remains politically active, as Yours, Etc.: Letters to the Press 1945-1989 makes clear). For example, in his Monsignor Quixote (1982), a later novel which reworks many of the themes of The Power and the Glory (1940), what...