Graham Greene is a slightly less gifted story-teller than Somerset Maugham, but he is a literary one nevertheless, and because of that you will profit by picking up almost anything he has written. Having served in British intelligence, he is as informed and authentic but more interesting than le Carre, for example, at least in my opinion.

Every few pages he offers us memorable insights into Batista's Cuba just before Castro. Greene presents glimmers of wise observations and interesting events, such as the construction of missile sites (or not) and a most interesting game of checkers involving 50ml vials of scotch and bourbon in opposition.

It is a comedy, a thriller and a love story all rolled into one very pleasant Goodread. (less)

Il nostro agente dall’a vana ironia

Era fra i libri-transistor (*1) che recuperai in una cantina ma non lo lessi a causa dell’agente nel titolo. Qualche mese fa mi è capitato sott'occhio un sondaggio in cui un manipolo di lettori di Greene decretava che “Il nostro agente dall’Avana" fosse il suo libro migliore.
Ribalto il risultato, gli affibbio due stelle e lo colloco all'ultimo posto sul Green(e). Avevo fatto bene a lasciarmi scoraggiare dal termine Agente (che ovviamente sta per spia), il libro è peggiore di quanto immaginassi.

Abbiamo appurato di esser disposti ad accettare la finzione creata da uno scrittore, di abbandonarci alle sue parole. Greene non viene meno alle condizioni dell'accordo, inizia ad imbastare la storia e la conduce nel punto in cui al protagonista viene chiesto di diventare un agente segreto al servizio di Sua Maestà e di creare una rete di subagenti per i quali gli saranno versati dei rimborsi spese. Il protagonista accetta e crea una rete fasulla, romanzesca anch'essa, scegliendo delle persone vere (a loro insaputa) e fingendo di servirsene. La rete, come in un film comico, funziona sfruttando le improbabili coincidenze e la fiducia dei vertici del servizio segreto, ciò consente al protagonista di incassare i lauti rimborsi. La richiesta della doppia credulità e il venir meno dell'accordo tacito fra scrittore e lettore mi ha disturbato soprattutto quando gli agenti doppiamente fittizi, attraverso coincidenze ancora più improbabili, hanno iniziato a morire. L'ironia di Greene non mi ha fatto ridere (se quello era lo scopo) la vicenda mi ha lasciato indifferente, (non ha il ritmo della spy story) e neppure l'ambientazione cubana pre rivoluzionaria mi ha colpito. Avrei assegnato una stella se non fosse stato per la partita a dama alcolica che il protagonista gioca contro il poliziotto cubano Segura. Bourbon da un lato della scacchiera, whisky scozzese dall'altro, 24 bottigliette in miniatura: chi mangia una pedina deve berne il contenuto. Tante e tali varietà di liquore solo un passionista poteva raccoglierle; questi alcuni nomi: Harper's, Kentucky Tavern, Old Agryll, Lord Calvet, Haig… per trovarne uno che conoscessi ho dovuto attendere il VAT 69. Il finale è in sintonia con il tenore della storia, cioè altrettanto inverosimile.


(*1)
https://snipboard.io/KLOP9B.jpg
https://snipboard.io/ioHW45.jpg

la sorpresa più bella di quei libri fu Sloan Wilson
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/im...

I love Greene's humor, philosophy, and moral absurdities. Not a perfect novel, but advanced and amazing in many many parts. Probably exactly in the middle stuck between five and four stars. Not as good a book as _The Heart of the Matter_, _The Quiet American_, or even _Power & the Glory_, but probably a more purely enjoyable novel than any of the those.

This is the fifth Graham Greene novel I've read, and the first with an even moderately happy ending. A pseudo-spy novel with a pseudo-spy named Wormold, the book is more a meditation on where human allegiance should really be when government and family seem at odds with each other. It's also a fairly quick read (for Greene) that's funny as hell.

Given the supposed military intelligence that led to the war in Iraq, it's tempting to look to books such as "Our Man in Havana," Graham Greene's comic spy novel about the Cold War, for parallels to our current situation. (In the book, drawings of pieces of a household vacuum cleaner are passed off as schematics for sophisticated weaponry.) Rather than there being any direct correlation, however, it brings more to mind that quote sometimes attributed to Mark Twain about how history may not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

On a lighter note, it might be fun to someday recreate the chess game played in "Our Man" that pits miniature Scotch bottles against miniature bourbon bottles, with captured pieces being consumed by the player doing the capturing. As such, the superior player becomes drunk faster than his inferior opponent -- unless, of course, he purposely gives up pieces. It's one of the more humorous scenes in the book.

This farce holds the same canny and clever delight as the Pink Panther, Dr. Strangelove and The Comedy of Errors, with dialogue and pacing to which David Mamet is clearly indebted. I could almost see the smoke from Graham Greene's typewriter keys swirling in the air as he tore through sheets of erasable bond, churning out this crazy, wonderful and utterly a propos satire of spies.

It's the mid 1950's when we meet our man, Jim Wormold, a milquetoast British expatriate who moved to Havana prior to World War II, having escaped military service due to his bum leg. He is a sad sack salesman of vacuum cleaners, abandoned by the mother of his blossoming 17 yr old daughter, Milly, who is part sainted Madonna, part bombshell Marilyn.

Wormold is inexplicably recruited as a spy by MI6- the British Secret Service- in a fabulous men's room encounter with scene stealer and smooth operator, Hawthorne (a.k.a 59200). Wormold marvels that he has been entrusted to spy- he has few contacts, fewer friends, is apolitical to the point of apathy, and bumbles awkwardly through his dull and lonely life. He is also broke and has a daughter whose demands score his guilty heart.

This brief tale chronicles Wormold's adventures as a spy; ironically, he creates a network of sub-agents, unleashes a series of events that rock the intelligence world, and manages to build up his bank account with a tidy sum in the process.

The butts of the joke are the British Secret Service and the cult of pop culture espionage. There are so many laugh-out-loud moments- I won't spoil by sharing- but this was a delicious read.

It's not all fun and games, however; Greene may have intended a light-hearted comedy, but he reveals critical and extremely prescient observations about Cuba and the coming revolution and about the Cold War hysteria that damaged reputations and even destroyed the lives of innocent people who were identified as Communists or communist sympathizers. In light of the manipulation of military intelligence that led to the invasion of Iraq, his satire remains alive and relevant to this day.

It is a true gift that a writer so associated with heavier themes of religious ambivalence, imperialism, and the universality of suffering, could toss those themes back with a wink and a giggle and wonderful readability.

This is the fourth Graham Greene novel that I have read and I am still not sure how I feel about him. Without doubt, the Greene novel I have liked the most so far was, “The Human Factor.” With other, more famous titles, such as “Brighton Rock,” I have been impressed by the writing, but less engrossed by the story and the characters. I felt much the same about this novel.

James Wormold is a vacuum-cleaner salesman, whose wife has left him and who has not enough money to keep his beloved daughter, Milly, in the style to which she aspires. His financial concerns become less of a burden when he is approached by Hawthorne, who tries to recruit him as a spy. Before long, Wormold is making up agents, writing fictitious reports, claiming expenses and more involved that he thought possible. Despite Hawthorne’s initial disquiet, events unfold which make it seem as though Wormold is truly a spy – as Greene himself once was.

This is a world that Greene knew well and he gleefully pokes fun at the world of espionage, but recognises the danger beneath the dry humour. I thought this was intelligent and an interesting scenario, although I did have a feeling of distance, from the characters, as I so often feel with Greene’s writing. Still, I am pleased to have read this and rate it 3.5.

I read loads of Graham Greene in the 1970s and then ignored him until a few years ago. In the last couple of years I've been working my way through his bibliography and have yet to come across anything that isn't provocative, well written, original and surprising. And so it proved with Our Man in Havana (1958) which is intriguing, evocative, humourous and occasionally very funny.

Although the majority of the book takes place in Cuba it is the brief interludes in London which provide many of the laugh out loud moments.

Unusually for Graham Greene the Catholic content is fairly minimal and the faith is even mildly ridiculed here and there.

Our Man in Havana is 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 generate some much needed income, he files bogus reports based on Charles Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare and dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs, that is until things change when his reports start coming true.

Graham Greene joined MI6 in August 1941. In London, Greene had been appointed to the subsection dealing with counter-espionage in the Iberian Peninsula, where he had learned about German agents in Portugal sending the Germans fictitious reports, which garnered them expenses and bonuses to add to their basic salary. One of the agents was "Garbo", a Spanish double agent in Lisbon, who gave his German handlers disinformation, by pretending to control a ring of agents all over England. In fact, he invented armed forces movements and operations from maps, guides and standard military references. Garbo was the main inspiration for Wormold, the protagonist of Our Man in Havana.

Our Man in Havana pre-dates the Cuban Missile Crisis, but certain aspects of the plot, notably the role of missile installations, appear to anticipate the events of 1962.

All in all it's another Graham Greene winner.

4/5





I've also ordered a DVD of Carol Reed's 1960 cinematic adaptation of Our Man in Havana (Greene also wrote the screenplay)

Here's the trailer...
https://youtu.be/5tTdCoVlBdE

Director: Carol Reed, PG, 1960
Stars: Alec Guinness, Noël Coward, Maureen O’Hara

It looks very promising - and what a magnificent cast

This is what The Times said about the 2006 DVD release...

Poorly reviewed on its release, this Cold War black comedy, making its debut on DVD, has remained unfairly in the shadows. Reuniting The Third Man pairing of the director Reed and the novelist Graham Greene, who again adapted his own book for the screen, it stars Guinness as the vacuum cleaner salesman Jim Wormold, recruited against his better judgment by the old- school spook Hawthorne (Coward) to spy for his country.

Reed makes excellent use of his pre-revolutionary Havana locations, mixing the hedonistic sumptuousness of daylight with night-time’s chiaroscuro with aplomb, while an excellent cast have great fun with Greene’s spiky satire.

This is a well-written, perfectly plotted, political, prescient "entertainment" (as Greene called some of his works). While reading, I didn't feel at all the implausibility of the recruitment by the British Secret Service of a vacuum-cleaner salesman living in Cuba or that of the courting of his Catholic teenage daughter by a Cuban policeman/enforcer. The humor in the dialogue and elsewhere is dry and funny in a-wink-and-a-nod kind of way.

In the otherwise-wonderful The Human Factor I had disliked the similes, which I found awkward, but here they are perfect. The only criticism I have is of the ending, which seemed just a bit too 'twee.' (I'm not British, but it's the perfect word to use.) Despite that critique, though, one of the strengths of this story is the heart that's behind it.

While it is a product of its time -- Greene was writing when Britain still had remnants of empire left -- the author's humanity and humour shine through today. While partly a satire on the British establishment of the 1950s a la Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, the tale manages to stay one step above farce and keeps us reading with believable characters in a situation that becomes ever more unbelievable. There are also tasty meta aspects -- our hero builds ever more fantastic backstories for his list of fictional agents, only to find them come to life and die in a way no novelist could engineer. Sure, there is the Greenian obsession with Catholicism but he's happy to poke a stick in the eye of higher ups who routinely foist their nonsense upon us hoi polloi in the name of patriotism. Good stuff.

Download my starter library for free here - http://eepurl.com/bFkt0X - and receive my monthly newsletter with book recommendations galore for the Japanophile/crime fiction/English teacher in all of us.

Замаскированный под детектив сатирический политический роман, который читается с необыкновенной легкостью и выглядит развлекательным, не так уж и прост. В основном высмеивается разведка, и есть основания считать, что не все уж и выдумано, но есть вещи и посерьезнее. Бедный Уормолд, торговец пылесосами, был завербован разведчиком Готорном; он тихо-мирно работал во внешней разведке, по выходным сочиняя в буквальном смысле донесения в центр. Он фотографировал детали пылесоса и выдавал их за фрагменты фортификаций повстанцев, выдумал агентурную сеть, получал за эти ценные сведения хорошие деньги, и все бы так и продолжалось годы, пока он не вышел бы на пенсию, накопив наследство для единственного человека, которого он любил – своей дочери Милли. Но центр решает, что одному человеку с таким бурным развитием событий не справиться и отправляет подготовленного помощника, некую Беатрису и радиста, которых он устраивает секретарем и счетоводом. И тут таинственным образом, убивают Рауля, совершается покушение на инженера Сефуэнтеса, нарисовавшего чертежи пылесоса под видом секретного оружия, которого он в своих донесениях назвал агентом. Ему сообщают о подозрительной похожести чертежей и фотографий на детали пылесоса. Вызывают на родину и парадоксальным образом награждают орденом. Эта сторона романа критикует бездарность руководства разведкой, в которой Грин служил какое-то время и сталкивался с подобным анекдотичным развитием событий. Но другим серьезным объектом критики, и вовсе не смешным, становится диктатура, которая в описываемый период существовала на Кубе. Полицейский Сегура выдвигает свою теорию о пытках: «пытают всегда по соглашению сторон». Авт��р выдвигает мнение, что есть класс пытуемых, с которыми можно делать все, что угодно – это бедные люди любой страны. И, конечно, вызывает содрогание портсигар Сегуры, сделанный из кожи человека, запытавшего его отца насмерть. Грин воспроизводит жуткую атмосферу диктатуры Батисты, когда за нарушение комендантского часа легко можно было распрощаться с жизнью.

My first Graham Greene novel and I had such high hopes but sadly I didn't enjoy it. 

An espionage thriller that is not meant to be taken too seriously with plenty of humour. James Wormold is a former vacuum-cleaner salesman who becomes a secret agent out of economic necessity. 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.

Although it was obviously well written with decent characters I just couldn't take to the book and found it very out dated. I aim to read a few more Graham Greene novels to get a better feel for his novels but unfortunately not the best start.