Our Man in Havana

✍ Scribed by Graham Greene; Christopher Hitchens

• Book ID: 108744302
• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Tongue: Italian
• Weight: 140 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

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.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. 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. (June)
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Review

The ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century manÆs consciousness and anxiety. (William Golding)

As comical, satirical, atmospherical an ÆentertainmentÆ as he has given us. (The Daily Telegraph , London)