I enjoy Graham Greene's earlier work immensely. The manner in which a tense readable, complicated (morally, emotionally, but rarely plotwise), literary story can be written using the conventions of genre. Many of Greene's later stories leave me cold. There is the occasional masterpiece (The Human Factor), but some of the work feels slight, painting Greene by numbers. And one recalls the true story of the magazine competition in the UK where competitors were asked to provide a parody of an opening paragraph by Greene. No prizes for guessing the winner... "Dr. Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party" is late Greene. It is very short, unremittingly bleak in its outlook on humanity (or rather one sector of society), and is a savage sarcastic satire on capitalism. Fischer is a multi-millionaire, his fortune founded on human hygiene. At regular parties he surrounds himself with acolytes, all rich, all prepared to go through humiliation for one of Fischer's gifts. Fischer is cold, cruel, manipulative. The narrator's encounters with Fischer and his parties spawn disgust on many levels - Fischer's view of others; the visceral disgust of his "porridge" party; and the disgust of the corruption of money, and the greed that goes with it. Aside from the (allegorical?) examination of capitalism all aspects of human life are here. We see poverty, extreme wealth, love, and death. And in illustrating these aspects the relationships in the book are conveyed powerfully (be the underlying emotion affection or anger). The relationship between Fischer and his daughter, a gentle creature abhorring her father's attitude and more particularly the attitude of those acolytes of Fischer (whom she christens "toads"); and that of Fischer's late wife and her friend/lover are especially noteworthy. The book is short, but the imagery of Fischer's parties, his humiliations, and the bleakness of his view of humanity will live long with this reviewer. It is a minor book, but highly recommended. Still in print in the UK it is perhaps time for a US publisher to reprint this later work of one of the twentieth century's greatest novelists.