Doctor Fischer of Geneva

More a novella than a full-length work, Doctor Fischer of Geneva is a fascinating fable of morality. The eponymous Doctor is very wealthy but also very unhappy. He "buys" pleasure literally by offering gifts to a circle of hangers-on in exchange for subjecting them to humiliation. Only his estranged daughter – who tragically dies – and her husband (the Doctor's son-in-law) see through the Doctor. What Jones, the narrator and in-law, recognises is crucially that the key feeling informing the Doctor's choice of actions is not hate (for humankind) but rather a notion of despising: a feeling of deep contempt and repugnance. Against a classic Greene backdrop of alcohol abuse, escapism, questions around God, and also morality, the climax occurs when Jones asserts that it is really himself whom the Doctor despises. This realisation triggers the Doctor's suicide and closure. Along the way narrative tension is maintained through Greene's exploration of just how far humans may go to debase themselves. A wonderful thought experiment. 8/10.

By Graham Greene