Infidelity may be the oldest narrative conflict. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero enrages the goddess Ishtar by rejecting her marriage proposal, because he has heard how she cheats on her male lovers. In the Garden of Eden, Eve’s attentions wander from Adam to the snake—a thinly disguised allegory for s****l dalliance—and as a result humans become mortal. You might say as a species we received the death penalty for our tendency to stray from our mates. But among all the stories I’ve read that address extramarital s*x, the one that most deeply haunts me—the one I keep coming back to, because it speaks most closely to my own experience—is Graham Greene’s postwar classic, The End of the Affair.
Sarah, the adulterous heroine, and Bendrix, the protagonist, make love in a London townhouse dur
