Through her diary, he learns that, when she thought he was dead after the bombing, she made a promise to God not to see Bendrix again if He allowed him to live again. Henry has finally started to suspect something, and Bendrix decides to go to a private detective to discover Sarah's new lover. Later, Bendrix is still wracked with jealousy when he sees Henry crossing the Common that separates their flats. After this, Sarah breaks off the affair with no apparent explanation. When a bomb blasts Bendrix's flat as he is with Sarah, he is nearly killed. He is frustrated by her refusal to divorce Henry, her amiable but boring husband. The relationship suffers from his overt and admitted jealousy. Sarah is based on Greene's lover at the time, Catherine Walston, to whom the book is dedicated.īendrix and Sarah fall in love quickly, but he soon realises that the affair will end as quickly as it began. Bendrix is based on Greene himself, and he reflects often on the act of writing a novel.

The novel focuses on Maurice Bendrix, a rising writer during the Second World War in London, and Sarah Miles, the wife of an impotent civil servant. The End of the Affair is the fourth and final of Greene's 'Catholic novels' tetralogy, following Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), and The Heart of the Matter (1948). Greene's own house at 14 Clapham Common Northside was bombed during the Blitz. The British edition of the novel is dedicated to 'C' while the American version is made out to 'Catherine'. Graham Greene's own affair with Catherine Walston formed the basis for The End of the Affair. Set in London during and just after the Second World War, the novel examines the obsessions, jealousy and discernments within the relationships between three central characters: writer Maurice Bendrix Sarah Miles and her husband, civil servant Henry Miles. The End of the Affair is a 1951 novel by British author Graham Greene, as well as the title of two feature films (released in 19) that were adapted from the novel.

The end of the affair book