Our Man in Havana

by Graham Greene

Ebook, 2018

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Your library

Description

Classic Literature. Fiction. Our Man in Havana, set in Cuba under the Batista regime, was published in 1958 - one year before Castro's revolution in 1959. This comedy thriller focuses on Havana-based vacuum cleaner salesman James Wormold, an Englishman. The story revolves around Wormold's reluctant role in the British Secret Service as 'Our Man in Havana', a post he accepts to fund the spendthrift habits of his beloved daughter. According to some conspiracy theorists, the novel presaged the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which many people feared could have led to World Ware Three.

Media reviews

Flavorwire

10 of the Greatest Cold War Spy Novels “Possibly the greatest writer of prose to devote so much of his time to the theme of espionage, Greene was himself briefly an intelligence agent. His WW 2 experiences in London, dealing with a disinformation-dealing agent in Portugal, provided the impetus

for this satirical and prescient look at the spy game. Wormhold, a British vacuum salesman in Havana during the Batista regime, becomes a spy for the MI6 to better provide for his daughter (he’s a single parent). The reports Wormhold concocts involve imaginary agents, whose salaries he collects. But his lively reports begin to greatly interest London, who send in reinforcements, initiating a deadly black comedy of errors, making the hapless agent a Soviet target. In an instance of perfect casting, Alec Guinness portrayed Wormhold in the 1959 film version.”

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— 3 more

NY Times

Toward the end, as we go into a business luncheon at which Wormold is due to die, things begin to warm, and it seems we will get what we came for. But when, for a climax, a dog wanders into the dining room, laps the whisky Wormold spilled, dies, and thus gives warning of poison, things simply fall

apart. I never saw a dog drink hard liquor, and don't believe this one did. However, I do believe he could read, and had had a look at the script, to know what he should do. All in all, little as a Greene fan likes to say it, this book misses, and in a thoroughly heartbreaking way, for it misses needlessly where it might have rung the bell.

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Guardian, UK

For once, Greene's Roman Catholic hang-ups, which make novels such as The End of the Affair so desolate, are kept in check - even joked about. "Hail Mary, quite contrary", prays convent-educated Milly, aged four. Nine years later she sets fire to a small American boy called Thomas Earl Parkman

Junior because he's a Protestant - "and if there was going to be a persecution, Catholics could always beat Protestants at that game."

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The Independent