Our Man in Havana (Penguin Classics)
by Graham Greene
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Book Summary Information
Author: Graham GreeneIntroduction: Christopher Hitchens
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-07-31
ISBN: 0142438006
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Book Reviews of Our Man in Havana (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: An Entertaining Footnote to History
Summary: 5 Stars
Graham Greene, a major, well-known 20th century British author, had a very long life, most of the century, and a very long and prolific writing career. He may be best known for The Third Man;The End of the Affair, and The Power and the Glory (Penguin Classics); but his books were greatly honored, highly-praised by the critics, generally best sellers, and often made into movies, as were the titles cited above. (The Third Man (50th Anniversary Edition) - Criterion Collection; The End of the Affair.( So was this one filmed,Our Man in Havana). The book is a later work of his, initially published on October 6, 1958, and just re-released. Greene famously divided his books into 'novels,' such as "The Power," and 'entertainments,' such as "Our Man." While working on the book at hand, he wrote to the Indian writer R.K. Narayan, a friend, that he was at work on "a rather hack job, an entertainment called 'Our Man in Havana.' I am getting too old to boil the pot." However, he also wrote to his mistress Catherine Walston in 1956 that "Our Man" was potentially a "very funny plot which if it comes off will make a footnote to history."
The book is set in Havana, Cuba, during the last days of the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and reproduces time and place very accurately on the page. The plot's reasonably gripping, and resonant. Like his later follower, John LeCarre, Greene had first-hand experience of the British Secret Service. On the recommendation of his lifelong friend Kim Philby, who turned out to be England's most notorious postwar spy/traitor, Greene had served in Africa's Sierra Leone during World War II, and this is a spy story. The lead character is Jim Wormold, an English seller of vacuum cleaners based in Havana. (Everyone can take a moment here to remember Alec Guinness as this character in the excellent movie based on the book.) Wormold is poor and desperate: his wife has left him, and he hasn't enough money to pay his hefty bar bills, let alone keep his beautiful teenage daughter Milly in her preferred lifestyle. So, without realizing what he's doing, or where it will take him and those he loves, he agrees to become a British spy; "Old Blighty's" man in Havana.
This may be an entertaining entertainment, but not to worry: there's plenty more serious Greene here. His instinctive anti-Americanism, left-wing viewpoints; and jaded cynicism as to the spy's life. His remarkable ability to create characters, even those who don't get many pages, such as Captain Segura, a local policeman/torture enthusiast, with a cigarette case made from human skin. Segura strongly resembles Batista's dread 'enforcer' Captain Ventura, and in his dark glasses and unmarked car, he will turn up again, and again, creating terror in various Latin American countries, most notably in Haitian dictator "Papa Doc" Duvalier's feared "toutons macoute."
Greene traveled widely, as a journalist, and to research his novels. He had great serendipity in his visits: many of them occurred at highly interesting times. "Our Man" was published in October, 1956; on New Years Day 1959 the revolutionary Fidel Castro came down from the mountains. The author set his Vietnamese war novel,The Quiet American (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition); (also an excellent film with Michael Caine, The Quiet American), just before the critical battle of Dien Bien Phu. He set The Comedians in the last days of Duvalier's Haiti. He had another stroke of luck: the long American blockade of Cuba has resulted in the country, and the city of Havana, staying much the same as the writer described them nearly fifty years ago.
All in all, think I'd have to go with "a very funny plot which if it comes off will make a footnote to history."
Summary of Our Man in Havana (Penguin Classics)
Graham Greene?s classic Cuban spy story, now with a new package and a new introduction
First published in 1959, Our Man in Havana is an espionage thriller, a penetrating character study, and a political satire that still resonates today. Conceived as one of Graham Greene?s ?entertainments,? it tells of MI6?s man in Havana, Wormold, a former vacuum-cleaner salesman turned reluctant secret agent out of economic necessity. To keep his job, he files bogus reports based on Lamb?s Tales from Shakespeare and dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs. Then his stories start coming disturbingly true.
First published in 1959, Our Man in Havana is an espionage thriller, a penetrating character study, and a political satire that still resonates today. Conceived as one of Graham Greene?s ?entertainments,? it tells of MI6?s man in Havana, Wormold, a former vacuum-cleaner salesman turned reluctant secret agent out of economic necessity. To keep his job, he files bogus reports based on Lamb?s Tales from Shakespeare and dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs. Then his stories start coming disturbingly true.
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