Call number
FIC GRE
Collection
Genres
Publication
Simon & Schuster (1978), Edition: 1st U.S. ed, 347 pages
Description
A leak is traced to a small sub-section of SIS, sparking off the inevitable security checks, tensions and suspicions. The sort of atmosphere, perhaps, where mistakes could be made? For Maurice Castle, it is the end of the line anyway, and time for him to retire to live peacefully with his African wife, Sarah. To the lonely, isolated, neurotic world of the Secret Service, Graham Greene brings his brilliance and perception, laying bare a machine that sometimes overlooks the subtle and secret motivations that impel us.
Media reviews
Greene builds the story slowly and methodically, ratcheting up the tension by careful and agonising degrees as Castle gradually realises the depth of the trap he has laid for himself. The climax culminates in a sickening plot twist that somehow manages to be both unexpected and oddly inevitable,
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and gives The Human Factor a frustrating but nonetheless realistic ending. Show Less
Kirkus' Reviews
... Greene has returned ... [in The Human Factor] ... to his earliest style, has pared down his moral patterns to the barest essential, has abandoned his penchants for exotica and skirmishes. What remains is a story as apparently plain as Greene's perfect prose -- an open-hearted, tight-lipped
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pavane of conscience and sentiment that can be watched and enjoyed for all the wrong, and all the right, reasons. Show Less
I know this is impudent to say- because Mr. Greene taught John Le Carre to write such novels, as Joseph Conrad taught Mr. Greene to write such novels- but Mr. La Carre now does the same thing better.
User reviews
LibraryThing member patrickgarson
Greene's spy novel is almost unbearably bleak - he makes your average Le Carre seem like Mary Poppins - but it's a terrific book nonetheless.
Maurice Castle is a bored paper-pushing spy whose department is undergoing a security check. This slight variation to routine is enough to send Castle - and
Greene generates a tremendous amount of tension from his conflicted characters and their existential malaise. He deftly exposes the strong emotions even that even the most ostensibly staid and diffident among us are subject to, whilst at the same time penning a damning condemnation of powerful governments and their underlings.
Don't get me wrong - this isn't a thriller; the tension is based on emotion, not plotting. Despite this, The Human Factor does have a plot, but it's more of a stage for the dramas of his very human, very vulnerable characters.
Greene's prose is tight and without flare, but nevertheless still evocative and atmospheric when it needs to be - though regular readers will be unsurprised by the rainstorms that always seem to coincide with his climaxes.
An excellent book - both as a cold war spy novel, and a portrait of human ties and emotion.
Maurice Castle is a bored paper-pushing spy whose department is undergoing a security check. This slight variation to routine is enough to send Castle - and
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the department - into a tailspin. Decades of guilt, loneliness and paranoia may be enough to destroy any one of the sad, resigned spies in the department. Greene generates a tremendous amount of tension from his conflicted characters and their existential malaise. He deftly exposes the strong emotions even that even the most ostensibly staid and diffident among us are subject to, whilst at the same time penning a damning condemnation of powerful governments and their underlings.
Don't get me wrong - this isn't a thriller; the tension is based on emotion, not plotting. Despite this, The Human Factor does have a plot, but it's more of a stage for the dramas of his very human, very vulnerable characters.
Greene's prose is tight and without flare, but nevertheless still evocative and atmospheric when it needs to be - though regular readers will be unsurprised by the rainstorms that always seem to coincide with his climaxes.
An excellent book - both as a cold war spy novel, and a portrait of human ties and emotion.
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LibraryThing member bcquinnsmom
The Human Factor highlights a man, Maurice Castle, who is driven at times to make choices based on love and an often-misplaced sense of moral duty that have some pretty serious consequences for himself and others.
Castle is an agent in MI6, and as the book opens, a leak has been discovered in his
However, this book really is NOT a story about espionage or the cold-war intelligence game. Castle marches to his own inner sense of personal morality, as noted by his mother at one point, where she says:
"You always had an exaggerated sense of gratitude for the least kindness. It was a sort of insecurity ....You once gave away a good fountain pen to someone at school who had offered you a bun with a piece of chocolate inside."
It hit me while reading that this "sense of gratitude" is the key to understanding Maurice Castle -- and it offers an insight into the reasons behind Castle's actions. Loyalty, for Castle, begets loyalty, but the reader may make judgments based on his or her own understanding of patriotism or morality that misconstrue Castle's actions completely, so understanding Castle as a human being rather than as a spy or as a British citizen is key to understanding this story.
The Human Factor is truly an awesome novel, one of the best I've read this year. It starts out very slow, but the tension builds as the book progresses until you're so caught up in it that you can't look away. I'd definitely recommend it to people who enjoy British literature, and to those who enjoy reading about the grayness of human morality. It's also pretty decent as a novel of espionage if you don't want to get into the deeper aspects of the novel. Very highly recommended.
Castle is an agent in MI6, and as the book opens, a leak has been discovered in his
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division. Suspicion falls on his partner, Davis, who seems to have a lot more money than an agent in his position should -- he bets,he drives a Jag -- and he's also a pretty heavy drinker. Castle is older, near retirement, and leads a pretty quiet life, seemingly beyond reproach. But mild-mannered Castle is the one with the secret life. It started during his time in South Africa -- his black, African wife Sarah, was smuggled out of the apartheid-ruled country by a communist agent; and Castle long ago decided that he owed a debt of gratitude to the communists and started providing them with information from British intelligence, thinking that in some way he is helping Sarah's people. However, when his bosses decided that Castle will be the one who will provide their South African counterparts with information about an American operation in Africa, and he is forced to work with the very man who had held him on breaking race relations laws in South Africa vis-a-vis his relationship with Sarah there, a chain of events occurs which unravels his quiet and ordered life in England with his family. However, this book really is NOT a story about espionage or the cold-war intelligence game. Castle marches to his own inner sense of personal morality, as noted by his mother at one point, where she says:
"You always had an exaggerated sense of gratitude for the least kindness. It was a sort of insecurity ....You once gave away a good fountain pen to someone at school who had offered you a bun with a piece of chocolate inside."
It hit me while reading that this "sense of gratitude" is the key to understanding Maurice Castle -- and it offers an insight into the reasons behind Castle's actions. Loyalty, for Castle, begets loyalty, but the reader may make judgments based on his or her own understanding of patriotism or morality that misconstrue Castle's actions completely, so understanding Castle as a human being rather than as a spy or as a British citizen is key to understanding this story.
The Human Factor is truly an awesome novel, one of the best I've read this year. It starts out very slow, but the tension builds as the book progresses until you're so caught up in it that you can't look away. I'd definitely recommend it to people who enjoy British literature, and to those who enjoy reading about the grayness of human morality. It's also pretty decent as a novel of espionage if you don't want to get into the deeper aspects of the novel. Very highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member akfarrar
Even though Graham Greene lived and worked well into the ending of the 20th century, I was a little surprised when I saw the date of publication of ‘The Human Factor’: 1978, the year I graduated from university: For some reason I had associated it with the 1950s and an earlier generation.
Greene
This is a spy story – in the way that King Lear is a story about retirement or Waiting for Godot a play about a missed appointment. The title is appropriate – if 007 is all action, and Smiley not really much deeper than your average detective, Castle, the central character here, and Davis, his co-worker in the Security Service are not only fleshed out and rounded physically, but psychologically believable. The guilts and gratitudes, the anxieties and loves Mr Greene weaves into their tale are not mere excuses for action, they are the subject of the story – The Human Factor.
Through a debt of honour Castle feels bound to reveal what amount to trivial secrets to the ideological enemies of his nation – enemies who acted with more humanity and goodwill than supposed allies and friends. No guilt arises from the treachery, if anything it is a re-affirmation of the love he feels for his wife (the root cause of the debt) and a genuine attempt to relieve the suffering of her ‘people’ under the vicious Apartheid system both the British and American governments are working with covertly (and not so covertly) in an attempt to stop the threat of Africa turning ‘red’.
What we get is the clash of an individual with systems – the resulting crushing of the human by the state and its apparatus is quite desolating. The world has turned upside down – the doctor seeks ways to kill, the policeman attempts to justify and excuse crime; the Catholic church is anything but catholic and even the guard dog fawns on strangers.
Accidents happen in this ‘we’re not totalitarian’ state – the wrong man is executed (how else can we prevent bad publicity) – much as in the ‘regrettable’ accident of the killing of the innocent Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes.
Fictional though Mr Greene’s world is, it is a fiction based on a mental reality – that of a security service more frightened of the enemy within than a real threat without: I can only compare it to the human immune system turning against the cells of its own body.
Relevant to all of us in the present climate of ‘wars’ against terror which produce far more shocking tortures and crimes against humanity on behalf of the good guys than the bad guys could dream up (or afford).
Greene
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had had an early influence on me - but reading Greene from this end of my allotted time is a very different experience. The realisation that he is dealing in my lifetime gives a sharpness, if not bitterness, and reflecting on Greene’s observations is a more personal undertaking than initially presumed. Time present is to be found in time past.This is a spy story – in the way that King Lear is a story about retirement or Waiting for Godot a play about a missed appointment. The title is appropriate – if 007 is all action, and Smiley not really much deeper than your average detective, Castle, the central character here, and Davis, his co-worker in the Security Service are not only fleshed out and rounded physically, but psychologically believable. The guilts and gratitudes, the anxieties and loves Mr Greene weaves into their tale are not mere excuses for action, they are the subject of the story – The Human Factor.
Through a debt of honour Castle feels bound to reveal what amount to trivial secrets to the ideological enemies of his nation – enemies who acted with more humanity and goodwill than supposed allies and friends. No guilt arises from the treachery, if anything it is a re-affirmation of the love he feels for his wife (the root cause of the debt) and a genuine attempt to relieve the suffering of her ‘people’ under the vicious Apartheid system both the British and American governments are working with covertly (and not so covertly) in an attempt to stop the threat of Africa turning ‘red’.
What we get is the clash of an individual with systems – the resulting crushing of the human by the state and its apparatus is quite desolating. The world has turned upside down – the doctor seeks ways to kill, the policeman attempts to justify and excuse crime; the Catholic church is anything but catholic and even the guard dog fawns on strangers.
Accidents happen in this ‘we’re not totalitarian’ state – the wrong man is executed (how else can we prevent bad publicity) – much as in the ‘regrettable’ accident of the killing of the innocent Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes.
Fictional though Mr Greene’s world is, it is a fiction based on a mental reality – that of a security service more frightened of the enemy within than a real threat without: I can only compare it to the human immune system turning against the cells of its own body.
Relevant to all of us in the present climate of ‘wars’ against terror which produce far more shocking tortures and crimes against humanity on behalf of the good guys than the bad guys could dream up (or afford).
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LibraryThing member Muscogulus
This 1978 thriller, set mainly in London, was called "probably the best espionage novel ever written," and it's not far short of that. The main character, Castle, is a paper-pusher in an obscure office dealing with Africa intelligence. Earlier in his career he was a spy in South Africa, and Sarah,
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the black South African woman who aided him, is now his wife in color-conscious England. Castle's boss wants him to work on a project that will have him sharing information with the South African intelligence boss who once tried to jail Sarah, and who probably killed the friend who helped her escape. Meanwhile the new boss and his cold-blooded assistant are trying to track the source of suspected leaks within Castle's office. Things quickly get out of hand. Show Less
LibraryThing member Eamonn12
One of the hallmarks of Greene’s writings is how much of his work examines moral choices. He constantly tests our view of dilemmas that call for judgement as to a ‘right way’ or a ‘wrong way’ of handling them and often leaves us anxious about whether there is in fact a ‘right’ or a
And is an individual whose life is saved by another thereby bound in gratitude to that other for the rest of the saved life? And former enemies, who put one’s life at risk in the past: should they be accepted later as allies? And should changing circumstances re-draw the boundaries of allegiance and loyalty?
I’ve been waffling on like this because I’m not good enough as a reviewer to talk about this book in any specific detail lest I give away its plot. And the book is very old-fashionedly a book of tight plot, a page-turner, a book hard to put down, even though you have to get up early the next morning. It’s all this, but much more besides.
Greeneland.
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‘wrong’ way of doing anything. For instance, if an individual in a spying organisation is suspected of having been compromised to the extent of his putting other lives at risk, does one wait for irrefutable proof, thereby continuing run serious risks to the ‘organisation’? Or should one proceed to elimination on the basis of reasonable proof? And is an individual whose life is saved by another thereby bound in gratitude to that other for the rest of the saved life? And former enemies, who put one’s life at risk in the past: should they be accepted later as allies? And should changing circumstances re-draw the boundaries of allegiance and loyalty?
I’ve been waffling on like this because I’m not good enough as a reviewer to talk about this book in any specific detail lest I give away its plot. And the book is very old-fashionedly a book of tight plot, a page-turner, a book hard to put down, even though you have to get up early the next morning. It’s all this, but much more besides.
Greeneland.
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LibraryThing member LizzySiddal
An uncompromising masterpiece depicting the world of espionage in all its mucky glory!
LibraryThing member TTAISI-Editor
This is marvelous late Greene, a spy story made all the better for the self-aware references to James Bond (and the unreality it represents). Counter-espionage with drama and genuine understanding of human psychology and emotion, topped off with the challenge of tackling Apartheid and English race
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issues. Also worth noting that this Everyman's Library edition is wonderful and worth the hardcover investment. Show Less
LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
My chest hurts. Okay. One thing I like about this book is how his secret agents are neither action heroes or ordinary boring joes like he's trying to deflate the myth and shit. Like, in this book it's just a job, but it's still a really crazy job and they do intense things. Feels accurate.
LibraryThing member BooksForDinner
One of the best espionage books I've ever read. Greene (and LeCarre of course) use the genre to write great novels, not great spy novels. His investigations of loyalty, love, race, apartheid, alcoholism...all are fantastic. Well done.
LibraryThing member clshaver08
Very impressed. This is the first book by G.G. I have read. I do not like the neither USA or USSR is bad or good moral relativism which is expressed by several characters (particularly Daintry), but it is so well written that I do find myself rooting for the traitor Castle.
LibraryThing member KurtWombat
Graham Greene expanded my view of the world beyond America. The reader is invited in through the very british/ambivelent catholic soul of the main character and then taken to exotic South Africa where his love crosses racial and political boundaries. My introduction to apartheid which is only one
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of the political dead ends faced by this secret service bureaucrat as he faces the usual Graham Greene conflicts of faith, loyalty and conscience. Gripping all the way through with the spy intrigue deepened by trying to live with your own soul. Show Less
LibraryThing member PDCRead
Castle is approaching retirement from MI6 where he has been an officer in the Africa section for a number of years following active service in the continent. He is married to a black South African lady who he helped escape from the apartheid regime. He is enjoying his quiet and uneventful life,
To write this tense thriller Green drew on all his experience and knowledge from his time at MI6 during the Second World War. It is a bleak story, that is very cleverly written too, as he has managed to get across the mundaneness of the bureaucrat’s job in the service, whilst examining the larger question of loyalty to family or to country. I really liked the subtlety of the writing too. It doesn’t have the glamour and excitement of some spy fiction, but it does have the drama.
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when him and his assistant, Davis, are interviewed following the discovery of a leak in the service that has been traced back to his department. The investigation concludes that Davis is the source of the leak and action is taken, but the cloud of suspicion still hangs over Castle and he realises that he may have to make a greater sacrifice to save all that he cherishes.To write this tense thriller Green drew on all his experience and knowledge from his time at MI6 during the Second World War. It is a bleak story, that is very cleverly written too, as he has managed to get across the mundaneness of the bureaucrat’s job in the service, whilst examining the larger question of loyalty to family or to country. I really liked the subtlety of the writing too. It doesn’t have the glamour and excitement of some spy fiction, but it does have the drama.
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LibraryThing member siri51
Mild mannered spies ; one is a double agent, an innocent man is poisoned and an unloved dog is shot and of course the patient wife knows nothing.
LibraryThing member Eyejaybee
I am a great fan of Graham Greene's books. I first read one of his novels (I think it was the now largely overlooked 'England Made Me) nearly forty years ago and have since read most of his oeuvre, and have eagerly re-read more than a few of them. I do, however, frequently find myself listening to
Greene disperses his melancholia through his observation of the repetitive minutiae of life, and it is rare for any semblance of joy to erupt. This book was first published in 1978 at a time when the British Security Services were still reeling from the embarrassment of the exposure of Anthony Blunt's treachery, and their complicity in covering it up. Predictably it owes far more to the le Carre tradition than that of Ian Fleming, though some of the characters occasionally show a certain wistfulness at the lack of exciting gadgets.
Maurice Castle, an old hand in the Service, is seeking to coast to his retirement working alongside his young colleague Arthur Davis. Seven years previously Castle had been stationed in Pretoria where he had initially recruited as an agent, and then fallen in love with Sarah, a Bantu woman. At the height of the apartheid period this endangered both of them, and Castle had had to leave, having also made arrangements for Sarah's escape from the clutches of the terrifying Bureau of State Security (BOSS) led by Cornelius Muller. With the help of an underground network Sarah managed to escape too, and met Castle in Lorenco Marques (in Mozambique).
Seven years later they are married and living in Berkhamsted (Greene's birthplace) with Sarah's son Sam. Castle has become another commuter, cycling to the station then catching the same train every day into the capital and then reversing his journey in the evening with comforting (or stultifying regularity). Life seems placid until an apparent leak is traced to Castle's section, and both he and Davis find themselves being investigated by Daintry from the internal review division. Daintry is an essentially fair man, and both Castle and Davis find themselves getting on fairly well with him. They are less comfortable with the sinister Dr Percival, one of the more senior figures within the Servie, though they are not alone in this. Daintry finds himself equally ill at ease with Percival, whom he suspects of being over anxious to take drastic action to plug the leak before their American counterparts become aware of its existence.
I worry about what Greene's personal life must have been like as he never bestows anything approaching bliss, or even vague contentment, upon his characters. Castle seems to trudge between home and the office, with an occasionally foray to his favourite bookshop run by the lugubrious Mr Halliday, whose sun runs a less salubrious 'bookshop' across the road. Castle claims, and we have no reason to doubt him, that he is happy only when he is with Sarah and Sam, yet there is no outward sign that any of the three of them elicit any joy from the company of the others. Yet, despite this lack of outward emotion, Greene does stir the reader's empathy for Castle. He is clearly a good man, who acts for the beat in a far from ideal world. There is very little action, and none of the excitement of a James Bond story, but the plot does move quickly, and the reader is wholly sucked in to it.
One attribute that can also be guaranteed in Greene's work is plausibility. He may come down over heavily on the melancholic - he is, after all, one for whom I imagine the glass (or perhaps, more appropriately, the chalice) was at best half-empty, but his plots are grounded in the way people genuinely behave. Perhaps their uber-realism and fundamental lack of hope is why we find them so melancholic.
Some novelists find it difficult to end their novels, but Greene excelled himself here. Earlier this year I read Emily St John Mandel's excellent 'Last Night in Montreal', and felt moved to re-read the final two or three pages which reached out to the reader with an extraordinary power. Greene achieved something similar with the burst of sadness in the final paragraph of this book which, even against the context of a broadly melancholic novel, left me feeling I had been punched in the face, but perhaps in a good way!
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an internal loop of the Moody Blues' song 'Melancholy Man' while I do so. With the possible exception of the hilarious 'Travels With my Aunt', the streets of 'Greeneland' are awash with waves of melancholia, and they are seldom more prominent than in 'The Human Factor'.Greene disperses his melancholia through his observation of the repetitive minutiae of life, and it is rare for any semblance of joy to erupt. This book was first published in 1978 at a time when the British Security Services were still reeling from the embarrassment of the exposure of Anthony Blunt's treachery, and their complicity in covering it up. Predictably it owes far more to the le Carre tradition than that of Ian Fleming, though some of the characters occasionally show a certain wistfulness at the lack of exciting gadgets.
Maurice Castle, an old hand in the Service, is seeking to coast to his retirement working alongside his young colleague Arthur Davis. Seven years previously Castle had been stationed in Pretoria where he had initially recruited as an agent, and then fallen in love with Sarah, a Bantu woman. At the height of the apartheid period this endangered both of them, and Castle had had to leave, having also made arrangements for Sarah's escape from the clutches of the terrifying Bureau of State Security (BOSS) led by Cornelius Muller. With the help of an underground network Sarah managed to escape too, and met Castle in Lorenco Marques (in Mozambique).
Seven years later they are married and living in Berkhamsted (Greene's birthplace) with Sarah's son Sam. Castle has become another commuter, cycling to the station then catching the same train every day into the capital and then reversing his journey in the evening with comforting (or stultifying regularity). Life seems placid until an apparent leak is traced to Castle's section, and both he and Davis find themselves being investigated by Daintry from the internal review division. Daintry is an essentially fair man, and both Castle and Davis find themselves getting on fairly well with him. They are less comfortable with the sinister Dr Percival, one of the more senior figures within the Servie, though they are not alone in this. Daintry finds himself equally ill at ease with Percival, whom he suspects of being over anxious to take drastic action to plug the leak before their American counterparts become aware of its existence.
I worry about what Greene's personal life must have been like as he never bestows anything approaching bliss, or even vague contentment, upon his characters. Castle seems to trudge between home and the office, with an occasionally foray to his favourite bookshop run by the lugubrious Mr Halliday, whose sun runs a less salubrious 'bookshop' across the road. Castle claims, and we have no reason to doubt him, that he is happy only when he is with Sarah and Sam, yet there is no outward sign that any of the three of them elicit any joy from the company of the others. Yet, despite this lack of outward emotion, Greene does stir the reader's empathy for Castle. He is clearly a good man, who acts for the beat in a far from ideal world. There is very little action, and none of the excitement of a James Bond story, but the plot does move quickly, and the reader is wholly sucked in to it.
One attribute that can also be guaranteed in Greene's work is plausibility. He may come down over heavily on the melancholic - he is, after all, one for whom I imagine the glass (or perhaps, more appropriately, the chalice) was at best half-empty, but his plots are grounded in the way people genuinely behave. Perhaps their uber-realism and fundamental lack of hope is why we find them so melancholic.
Some novelists find it difficult to end their novels, but Greene excelled himself here. Earlier this year I read Emily St John Mandel's excellent 'Last Night in Montreal', and felt moved to re-read the final two or three pages which reached out to the reader with an extraordinary power. Greene achieved something similar with the burst of sadness in the final paragraph of this book which, even against the context of a broadly melancholic novel, left me feeling I had been punched in the face, but perhaps in a good way!
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LibraryThing member browner56
Maurice Castle is a spy, but not the James Bond/Jason Bourne kind of spy. Working for the British Foreign Office during the cold war years of the 1970s, he spends most of his days executing mundane tasks from a non-descript office in central London. He remains isolated from all but a few of
While it would be fair to call ‘The Human Factor’ a non-thrilling thriller, that characterization is certainly not intended as a criticism. The conflict and intrigue in the story is cerebral rather than physical, which creates an appropriate canvass for compelling psychological profiles of Maurice and Sarah; indeed, Greene was a master at exploring the spiritual and emotional consequences of the actions taken by his protagonists (e.g., ‘The Heart of the Matter’, ‘The End of the Affair’, ‘The Quiet American’). This is not his best novel and some of the story line feels a little dated—for instance, a few significant events would not have occurred if the characters had cell phones. Nevertheless, it is still an effective and entertaining tale that any fan of the author will find to be quite satisfying.
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professional colleagues, meaning that his only real personal contact is with his wife Sarah, whom he met while on a covert assignment in Africa, and his step-son Sam. This routine is disrupted when a security leak is suspected in Castle’s division and it is this event that drives the plot of the novel and one that ultimately leads to a tragic outcome.While it would be fair to call ‘The Human Factor’ a non-thrilling thriller, that characterization is certainly not intended as a criticism. The conflict and intrigue in the story is cerebral rather than physical, which creates an appropriate canvass for compelling psychological profiles of Maurice and Sarah; indeed, Greene was a master at exploring the spiritual and emotional consequences of the actions taken by his protagonists (e.g., ‘The Heart of the Matter’, ‘The End of the Affair’, ‘The Quiet American’). This is not his best novel and some of the story line feels a little dated—for instance, a few significant events would not have occurred if the characters had cell phones. Nevertheless, it is still an effective and entertaining tale that any fan of the author will find to be quite satisfying.
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LibraryThing member Dorritt
Competent example of the genre but nothing here that John LeCarre hasn't done better ... and with a lot more heart. Greene makes us understand the moral ambiguity that haunts "everyman spies" like his drab, middle-aged family man Maurice Castle, but only as an intellectual puzzle. John LeCarre's
If you want Graham Greene's original, fresh and worthwhile take on the intelligence business, read "Our Man in Havana" and give "Human Factor" a miss.
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novels, especially his George Smiley novels, manage to accomplish this but also make the reader feel the anguish of it.If you want Graham Greene's original, fresh and worthwhile take on the intelligence business, read "Our Man in Havana" and give "Human Factor" a miss.
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LibraryThing member jklugman
I love this novel because it is superficially a genre novel (mystery-thriller-espionage) but the spy stuff is just background for fleshed out characters, and there really is not a lot of plot machinations to get lost in, like I do with a lot of Le Carre's works (or even Greene's earlier novels). My
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favorite bit is when the protagonist, out of pity, attends the wedding of the daughter of a stuffy, lonely security officer. Show Less
Awards
Notable Books List (1978)
Pages
347
ISBN
0671240854 / 9780671240851