TY - JOUR T1 - Book reviews JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 786 LP - 786 DO - 10.3399/bjgp10X532521 VL - 60 IS - 579 AU - John BS Brooks Y1 - 2010/10/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/60/579/786.abstract N2 - A BURNT OUT CASE GRAHAM GREENE 1960 Vintage, Centenary edition, 2004 208 £7.99 978-0099478430 THE ISLAND VICTORIA HISLOP 2006 Headline Review 496 £7.99 978-0755309511 Tropical diseases fascinated me as a medical student at a time when Professor Bruce-Chwatt was a world authority on malaria (distinguished malariaologist 1907-1989). Yet, since qualification I have only seen two case of malaria in general practice and had very little practical involvement with tropical medicine. My interest in leprosy was awakened many years ago when I read Graham Greene's A Burnt Out Case and this was despite the fact that I would probably never see a live case. Imagination is a strange thing and I can know see how the author Jules Verne could write books like Around The World In Eighty Days and Michel Strogoff, which was set in Russia without ever traveling very far in his early years. Recently I read The Island by Victoria Hislop and I was immediately transported back to the world of leprosy which is the main theme of the book.Graham Greene started to write A Burnt Out Case at a low ebb in his life in 1959. He wanted to spend some time at a hospital of the Schweitzer kind (Albert Schweitzer. German-French theologian, musician, philosopher and physician, 1875-1965), run by a religious order in West Africa. Greene was trying to escape the void that he used to find after writing a successful book … ER -