Graham Greene’s great hunted-priest novel, set during the persecution of Catholics in Mexico.

It follows a shabby, frightened, alcoholic “whisky priest” moving through villages, plantations and back roads while the authorities close in behind him. It has the bones of a chase narrative — police, betrayal, hiding places, bad roads, worse weather — but Greene being Greene, the chase is really moral weather. Nobody gets to be clean.  Faith is embarrassingly difficult to kill.

The priest is weak, compromised, vain, tired, afraid, and still somehow necessary; the lieutenant pursuing him is severe, principled, anti-clerical, and not simply evil. A grim little Catholic fever dream, basically, but with actual narrative drive rather than incense fog. Good for readers who like Dostoevsky, moral panic, hunted men, failed holiness, and novels where redemption arrives looking like a bad administrative error.

Penguin paperback. First published by William Heinemann in 1940; first published in Penguin in 1962, with this copy a 1968 reprint. Vintage softcover with visible cover wear, rubbing, edge/corner wear, age-toning and general handling marks. Binding intact and pages readable. Solid reading copy, not collector condition.