Our Man In Havana
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4.5 • 12 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Discover Graham Greene’s blackly comic and timely espionage thriller, set amid the vice and squalor of pre-revolutionary Havana.
‘British Intelligence being sent up something rotten’ Daily Telegraph
Wormold is a vacuum cleaner salesman in a city of power cuts. His adolescent daughter spends his money with a skill that amazes him, so when a mysterious Englishman offers him an extra income he's tempted. In return all he has to do is carry out a little espionage and file a few reports. But when his fake reports start coming true, things suddenly get more complicated and Havana becomes a threatening place.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Actor Jeremy Northam (Gosford Park, Tristram Shandy) has himself a ball with Greene's comic suspense novel, its Cuban setting and panoply of international characters. He downplays the religious and political undertones of the book in favor of Greene's comedy of a vacuum-cleaner salesman turned secret agent. Greene's array of Germans, Brits and native Cubans allows Northam to trot out some of the choicest examples from his stable of voices, all cleverly done. The brief bits of salsa music that punctuate the breaks between chapters underscore Northam's jaunty reading. This is one classic novel meant to be enjoyed for entertainment, not self-improvement.
Customer Reviews
Life in a vacuum
The author (1904-1991) was English and one of the best writers of the 20th century. ‘Our Man In Havana’ is an espionage thriller with its tongue planted firmly in its cheek. The setting is Batista’s Cuba in the early 1950s, the protagonist an impecunious British vacuum cleaner salesman recruited as a spy by MI6, who makes all his intelligence submissions up.
I read it over 50 years ago, but was stimulated to re-read while making my way through ‘Red Heat’, Alex Von Tunzelmann’s excellent history of American Cold War adventurism in the Caribbean.
Mr Greene, who was an MI6 agent himself during WW2 and travelled extensively in what used to be called the Third World, wrote a number of novels in the espionage category, although he referred to them as “entertainments.” This was the last of them, and probably not the best. While Greene’s prose and sense of humour both stand the test of time admirably, he made his point, or points, by the 50 per cent mark and the latter part drags in comparison.
Interestingly, Fidel Castro’s major criticism of ‘Our Man In Havana’ was that Mr G underplayed the violence and repression of the Batista regime. The author did not make the same mistake in his 1966 effort ‘The Comedians’ set in Papa Doc Duvalier’s Haiti (definitely no laughing matter): a better novel IMO.