Our Man In Havana
A Darkly Comic Cold War Espionage Thriller
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- €6.99
Publisher Description
A vacuum cleaner salesman becomes a spy by accident and a liar by design.
Jim Wormold lives quietly in pre-revolutionary Havana, selling vacuum cleaners to customers who can scarcely afford them. When a British intelligence officer offers him money to report on local activity, Wormold agrees. His daughter’s expenses demand it.
Lacking real information, he invents it. Diagrams of military installations are drawn from appliance parts. Agents are imagined. Reports are filed. London believes every word.
What begins as improvisation gathers consequence. As his fabrications circulate through intelligence channels, other parties begin to act on them. In a city already thick with tension, fiction proves capable of generating its own danger.
Greene’s espionage novel balances satire with unease, exposing how easily authority can be deceived and how quickly deception can turn fatal.
‘British Intelligence being sent up something rotten’ Daily Telegraph
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.
