Mexico

Abstract In spring 1938, while Brighton Rock was still in the press, Greene went to Mexico. He had been commissioned by a publisher to write a book on the state of the Catholic Church in that country, where for several years it had been persecuted by a fiercely anti-religious government. He spent some weeks travelling in the remoter regions, often in great discomfort, and produced two of his best books. The Lawless Roads, the one he had been commissioned to write, is as much an autobiographical exploration as a survey of conditions in the country, while The Power and the Glory is one of his most popular novels, and at the same time one of the most profound. The Lawless Roads is a complex and artful text. It is very literary, drawing on Greene’s extensive reading, but the prose is vivid, conveying physical sensations with painful immediacy. A lighter note some- times appears, as when he discovers a community of Mexicans who are all called ‘Graham’ or ‘Greene’. There is a strong Catholic emphasis: the narrator makes efforts to hear Mass and sometimes attends Benediction as well; he goes to Confession when he is moving into a dangerous phase of his journey, and he recites ‘Hail Marys’ when he is scared in a storm.