THE POWER AND THE GLORY by Graham Greene

This novel, published in 1940, is about a man on the run during a purge of priests in Mexico in the 1930s.  The hunted man is known as the “whisky priest” because he has a serious drinking problem.  He frequently sees his picture posted next to another wanted man—an American serial killer.  Our priest is a self-proclaimed bad priest who has defied the state’s mandate that priests marry, even though he has fathered a child.  He journeys from village to village, visiting with all sorts of people--from a dentist to a banana farmer.  Each time that he has an opportunity to escape over the border, he gets called to attend an ill or dying person, knowing that he may be walking into a trap.  His nemesis is a mestizo who keeps turning up at inopportune times and who wants to deliver the priest to the authorities for the reward.  I liked the idea of this novel better than the actual novel.  Graham Greene is undoubtedly a great writer, but this novel has a smattering of unnamed characters, including the priest.  Personally, I found this aspect of the novel confusing and annoying.  For example, there’s a lieutenant and a jefe, but maybe there are more than one of each; I was never really sure.  To make matters worse, the author frequently uses pronouns with ambiguous antecedents.  In any case, I am always amazed at how much history I have learned through fiction.