Believing in God is not easy.

Going from an atheist stance to being convinced that there is a divine purpose in everything that happens is one of the most radical shifts one can experience in life.

In Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, Maurice Bendix is a handsome, self-absorbed writer, who one day strikes up a conversation with an attractive woman, as he is curious to learn more about her husband’s habits.

Initially, his reasons are purely professional – the woman’s husband could serve as inspiration for a character in a novel that he is planning to write, but soon, he finds himself unexpectedly falling in love with her. 

The affair takes place in London during the bombings.

They meet while buildings explode and people around them die from German attacks.

One day, a bomb strikes the building next to them, and Bendix becomes hurt, for a moment even falling briefly unconscious. When he wakes up, he returns to Sarah, who leaves the room shortly thereafter.

This will be the last time the lovers meet in intimate circumstances, as Sarah (unbeknown to Bendix) made a promise to God to sacrifice her relationship if only Bendix would survive the bomb attack. 

What follows after this incident is a story of love, miracles, and a man’s struggling relationship (or lack thereof) with God. 

Sarah’s conviction that God saved her lover because she promised to give him up makes it impossible for her to ever see him again. 

Bendix, not knowing the reason for the breakup, becomes distracted, finds it difficult to work or to do much of anything at all. 

Instead, he spends all his time trying to find answers to why his lover has deserted him. 

When he discovers it is because of God, what ensues is an existential struggle between him, Sarah and God. 

Graham Greene is considered one of the most prominent British writers of the 20th century. The End of the Affair is part of a series of books – also including The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter and A Burnt Out Case – exploring the topic of Catholicism. 

To many critics, they are the nucleus of his oeuvre. 

The combination of Greene’s literary mastery and existential subjects make them fascinating reads. 

In 1926, Greene had himself converted to Catholicism to be able to marry Vivien Dayrell-Browning. 

Greene never proclaimed to be a dedicated believer himself. He stated that his religiously themed novels, about the miracles of God, were to be understood as his way of resisting fascism, by spreading hope to his readers of a world beyond the horrors of the Second World War. 

Regardless of Greene’s intentions, the book remains an exploration of the world between non-belief and faith, told through the love story of two people becoming intertwined with one woman’s relationship with Catholicism and God.