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Convoluted, and not necessarily in a good way. I found it hard to believe that this was written by the same person who wrote "The Quiet American." Not a bad book, but not a great one.

Love reading Graham Greene but this is not close to his best.

Greene wrote this story in six weeks. The main character D, is a rebel from a civil war who arrives in England on a secret mission to buy coal. From the start everything goes wrong. The other side is trying to stop him and his trauma from his experiences in the war such as his wife executed, buried alive in a bombing raid all make him paranoid.

He meets Rose the daughter of the industrialist he is to negotiate with and he is beaten up, shot at and set up for a murder. The story is exciting and was made into a movie with Lauren Bacall. Overall a good espionage story set in a foggy, grimy 1930s England.

This is one of the least plausible, most incoherent spy books that I have ever read. As others have indicated, the plot makes no sense, e.g., maybe I have blinders with respect to modern-day technology but why is it so important that the protagonist have a specific set of papers to establish his bona fides to consummate a coal deal and is it really necessary to have a 14 year-old girl thrown out of a window as part of a very convoluted cover-up? The saving graces are Greene's understanding of psychology and ability to evoke interesting characters with very few brush/pen-strokes. Not his best effort though.

Elmore Leonard’s first rule for crime fiction: Never open a book with weather. But would this opening by Graham Greene sort of count, and if so, why not admit it is engaging and beautiful? “The gulls swept over Dover. They sailed out like flakes of the fog, and tacked back towards the hidden town, while the siren mourned with them: other ships replied, a whole wake lifted up their voices—for whose death?”

The Confidential Agent (1939) is a thriller by Graham Greene. Wikipedia tells us Greene wrote it on Benzedrine in six weeks! NaNoWriMo on drugs! He wrote it for quick cash, hated it, wanted it published under a pseudonym, but it nevertheless became a critical success. I liked it a lot, too.Greene (typically disdainful of thrillers) categorized it as one of his “entertainments,” but I challenge you to find many better written stories in the noir thriller genre. And there's a lot of good writing in this book, though when you consider he was writing this in the morning and The Power and the Glory (his masterpiece) in the afternoon, well, there's not maybe enough great writing in it. But I liked it a lot. 3.5, could go either way, up or down.

D. is a former teacher and scholar of romance literature from some country on the Continent--but most guess Spain--who has been contracted by his government to negotiate the sale of coal to his country: A confidential agent. His wife was accidentally killed during the war--maybe we presume the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) (the book was published in 1939) though it is never mentioned. Also never mentioned is the rise of fascism--Hitler, Franco, Mussolini and others, though the book clearly makes a stand for anti-fascist efforts such as happened in the Spanish Civil War and of course World War II.

D. is a man of peace, a university intellectual. “At this point in his life, most of his memories are literary” (an English teacher! Ha!). Nevertheless, he is asked to negotiate the deal, but the opening is almost comic in that he seems so passive and ill-fitted for any political act. He gets pushed around during a rugby celebration in a pub, he gets beaten up, his car is stolen, he gets shot at, and a girl who had helped him “falls out of a window” and is killed. He seems to be okay with all of this until the death of the girl, a turning point, and then he becomes an angry activist: Rebels in his country need this coal! (And who's trying to stop him? Fascists who want the coal, too!

In the process of the story he develops a relationship with the coal miner's daughter, Rose. Initially she doesn’t like it when he seems melodramatic or sentimental, in the way of despairing noir anti-heroes. He says he “feels nothing,” and “carries the war in his heart,” but as he wakes up and begins to convince her of his political commitments, he tells her, “You've got to choose some line of action and live by it. Otherwise nothing matters at all.”

D. is an expert in literary scholarship because of his work on The Chanson de Roland (Song of Roland), the 11th century poem about Roland, who is good and loyal and takes up the sword for justice, which is what D. finally does! This is my favorite aspect of the book, actually, and the one that is meant to convince readers to do the same. Seen in this light, D. can be seen as "mock-heroic" (like Don Juan or Don Quixote) in the early going, a kind of weak English teacher scholar of chivalric romance. But then things turn serious and we see the fascists are the folks harassing D. and he becomes a more aggressive fighter for justice and the rebel cause. It’s not one of Greene’s best books, but I find as I read them that there are very few I dislike! The more I think about this one, the more I admire it.

I just (6/1/24) saw the (1945) film based on the novel, featuring Charles Boyer and. . . whoa, Lauren Bacall! I had never seen it! Greene hated almost all of the films based on his books, and this one got panned, but he went to the press to defend it, and said at that point that was the only one that had done a decent job of conveying his story/message, and he singled out Bacall for her role in the film, which I agree is better than what the early reviews said. So the book was written during the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War, where Greene, aa savvy journalist as well as novelist, sided with the rebels against Franco. So this film came out in 1945, with the tide turning against Hitler and fascism.

So in the end, D. and Rose are reunited on a boat back to the continent, and he ends the film with a hopeful cry, "In the end we will win!" which reflects the world mood at the time, and hopefully the mood of the majority as we fight fascism again wherever it comes up.

Review first published on BookLikes: http://brokentune.booklikes.com/post/...

"The gulls swept over Dover. They sailed out like flakes of the fog, and tacked back towards the hidden town, while the siren mourned with them: other ships replied, a whole wake lifted up their voices – for whose death?"

So begins the story of D.

D. is an agent - a confidential agent - who is sent to England on a mission. Having arrived in Dover, nothing goes to plan and D. is soon pitched against another agent (L.).

In this race to fulfill his task, D. is thrown into the centre of a time and place pulled into antagonising directions - there is a battle between the young and old, the aristocracy and the ordinary men, the natives and foreigners, the mad and the sane, the powerful and the helpless, the stupid and the enlightened, love and indifference - all elements which would come to define the somewhat harrowing place that is Greene-land.

"It was absurd, of course, to feel afraid, but watching the narrow stooping back in the restaurant he felt as exposed as if he were in a yard with a blank wall and a firing squad."

Graham Greene famously wrote The Confidential Agent, fueled by Benzedrine, in parallel to The Power and the Glory. In contrast to The Power and the Glory, he expected to earn money from the sales of this "entertainment". It is of no surprise then that The Confidential Agent does not dwell on morality or religion as much as some of Greene's other books. It does have elements of those deliberations - after all The Confidential Agent is based on and inspired by the Spanish Civil War - but it does not go into great depths.

And, this for me is where it falls down. What I love about Greene is that he commits his protagonists to something - an ideal, a cause, a situation, anything - and gives them depth. This is lacking a bit here. D. is portrayed well and we learn much of his back-story, but knowing D.'s past does not help much to figure out other characters in the book. So, despite a promising start and interesting plot, the story itself loses grip on a number of occasions because there is little chemistry, or tension, between the characters - not between D. and his nemesis, not between D. and his persecutors, and not even between D. and Rose.

The Confidential Agent was first published in 1939, ten years after his first novel The Man Within, and knowing of Greene's life and career, it is still an "early" work. It shows all the potential that would fully develop in his subsequent work, but it just isn't of the same quality. However, I do wonder...
I haven't read The Power and the Glory, yet, but I almost want to wager that Greene put in it what he held back on in The Confidential Agent - less aimless caper and more study of the human condition.

Great, gripping tale of a 'confidential agent' on a mission in 'safe, secure, complacent' post-war Britain, where he tries to negotiate a coal contract on behalf of one side in a civil war in an unspecified country on the continent. To everyone's disbelief and astonishment, D is tailed by the opposing side, set upon by conspirators, shot at, and ultimately arrested for a murder which he didn't commit.
The mild, implacable immeasurably courteous agent then becomes the hunter instead of the hunted. But while he seeks justice for the murdered girl, he is beset by doubt, lack of trust, uncertainty and guilt about the way he has brought the stench of war to peaceful England, just as if he were carrying germs of a contagious disease.
He thinks he can never love again because he lost his wife in the war and he will never get over it, but it's rather romantic in a not-a-love-story kind of way. It's classic world-weary Graham Greene!
The narration is excellent.

Esta novela de agente secreto no tiene un ritmo trepidante ni grandes giros argumentales. El protagonista, marcado por la guerra y las tragedias sufridas, tiene un marcado sentido de la responsabilidad. Viaja a Inglaterra como representante de su país para conseguir un contrato de carbón. A partir de ahí se enfrentará a numerosos problemas como puede, sin demostrar mucha sagacidad.

El libro es directo y se lee rápido, aunque le falta una pizca de emoción. -Sin embargo, los personajes son buenos y la ambientación también, por lo que le he dado cuatro estrellas justas. Pese a que no me ha entusiasmado, no ha apagado mi interés por Graham Greene, del que espero leer más.

Recomendado para seguidores de las novelas de agentes secretos de estilo realista.

Unabridged
Duration: 7h 30 min
Read by Patrick Tull

From BBC Radio 4 - Drama:
Graham Greene's masterful tale of suspense. When Edgar Dominguez is sent to England on a mission to arrange a supply of coal for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War it seems a straightforward business negotiation; but no sooner does he set foot on English soil than he finds himself a hunted man, with seemingly no one he can trust and implicated in murder.

Greene wrote The Confidential Agent at the same time as his masterpiece The Power and The Glory. It was written in six weeks in 1938 as England stood on the brink of war, and the story is suffused with paranoia, distrust and urgency. He wrote it as an 'Entertainment' with the hope of getting a film made of the book and therefore providing much needed income for his family, in which he succeeded. A tense thriller where the hero must avoid trap after trap that is set for him haunted by the memory of his dead wife and his own time in prison awaiting execution.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07x1rct


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037610/?...

Κριτική στα Ελληνικά πιο κάτω...

I read The Confidential Agent it in two long afternoons.
This worked for me the way all previous books of Graham Greene seem to work...

On one hand, due to his life expeirences maybe, the author has some tendencies that I apprecaite. He always seems to try to touch on moral dilemas, to describe the aftermath of wars, poverty and other life experiences and trauma of his protagonists, to analyze their emotional life and how they internilize all the situations they had to go through and so on.

On the other hand, while his ideas about a story are good, usually these ideas end up to be much better than the actual book itsself. There is potential, but it doesn't fully materialize, something seems off.

Here there is too much suspension of disbelief one has to do and the plot is completely "artificial" and over the top. One can feel some empathy for the main character sometimes, but mostly I wondered how could it be him-the main character- who is chosen to do what he has to do. Too lame and dull for a confidential agent. The other characters, even the secondary ones are one-dimentional too. There is a silly romance out of the blue and I felt that the plot-twists are there to make the author's points or to keep the story going without any feeling of reality or credibility. The dialogues don't ring true either, while the end is over the top and meeehhhh.

Graham Greene has the ability to create precise imagery and lively scenes when he choose to, although often he doesn't use this skill to its full capacity. It's not evident on first sight, but the pace of the story is steady and this is a plus.

It's not a thriller, a spy novel or an adventure story as advertised, at least not by the modern meaning of the terms, it's not flawless, but it was a quite decent book, providing some food for thought.


Διάβασα το The Confidential Agent σε δύο απογεύματα.
Αυτό λειτούργησε για μένα όπως όλα τα προηγούμενα βιβλία του Graham Greene φαίνεται να λειτουργούν...

Από τη μια, λόγω των εμπειριών της ζωής του ίσως, ο συγγραφέας έχει κάποιες τάσεις που εκτιμώ. Φαίνεται πάντα να προσπαθεί να εγείρει ηθικά διλήμματα, να περιγράφει τις συνέπειες των πολέμων, της φτώχεια και άλλων εμπειριών ζωής και τραυμάτων στην ψυχοσύνθεση των πρωταγωνιστών του, να αναλύει τη συναισθηματική τους ζωή και πώς εσωτερικεύουν όλες τις καταστάσεις που έχουν να περάσει κ.λπ.

Από την άλλη, ενώ οι ιδέες του για μια ιστορία είναι καλές, συνήθως αυτές οι ιδέες καταλήγουν να είναι πολύ καλύτερες από το ίδιο το βιβλίο. Υπάρχει το υλικό, αλλά στο χαρτί δεν υλοποιείται πλήρως, κάτι χαλάει στην πορεία.

Εδώ πρέπει κανείς να ρίξει πολύ τις αμυνές του για να διαβάσει το βιβλίο, υπάρχουν πάρα πολλές απιθανότητες. Η πλοκή είναι εντελώς «τεχνητή» και υπερβολική. Κάποιος μπορεί να συμπάσχει με τον κεντρικό χαρακτήρα ως ένα βαθμό, αλλά όχι εντελώς και βασικά αναρωτιόμουν συνεχώς πώς θα μπορούσε να είναι αυτός ο χαρακτήρας που τον επέλεξαν να κάνει αυτό που πρέπει να κάνει. Πολύ αδύναμος χαρακτήρας για να αναλάβει μία λεπτή, "εμπιστευτική" αποστολή. Οι άλλοι χαρακτήρες, ακόμα και οι δευτερεύοντες είναι επίσης μονοδιάστατοι. Υπάρχει το απαραίτητο, χλιαρό και καθόλου πειστικό ρομάντζο και ένιωσα ότι οι ανατροπές της πλοκής είναι εκεί για να κάνει ο συγγραφέας μία δήλωση ή για να συνεχιστεί η ιστορία χωρίς να είναι έστω και λίγο ρεαλιστικές. Ούτε οι διάλογοι ακούγονται αληθινοί, ενώ το τέλος είναι κι αυτό μέσα στην υπερβολή και νερόβραστο.

Ο Graham Greene έχει την ικανότητα να δημιουργεί ακριβείς εικόνες και ζωντανές σκηνές όταν το επιλέξει, αν και συχνά δεν χρησιμοποιεί αυτή τη δεξιότητα στο μέγιστο των δυνατοτήτων του. Δεν είναι εμφανές με την πρώτη ματιά, αλλά ο ρυθμός της ιστορίας είναι σταθερός και αυτό είναι ένα συν.

Δεν είναι ένα θρίλερ, ένα κατασκοπευτικό μυθιστόρημα ή μια ιστορία περιπέτειας όπως διαφημίζεται, τουλάχιστον όχι με τη σύγχρονη έννοια των όρων, δεν είναι άψογο, αλλά ήταν ένα αρκετά αξιοπρεπές βιβλίο, που έδωσε τροφή για σκέψη. Απλά πάντα κάτι λείπει για να κάνει τα βιβλία αυτού του συγγραφέα πραγματικά καλά.

In the Introduction to the book Graham Greene mentions, that he wrote it only for money while his main project at this time was The Power and the Glory.
To increase productivity he wrote the book in rented flat and under influence of Benzedrine.
The effect was obvious, he managed to write 2,000 words a day while his normal output was 500 words. Benzedrine took its toll. Late afternoon he returned home feeling very tired and smallest thing could upset him. He feels that in long term it was a main factor in his marriage breakdown.
But then, a next day came, he took a morning pill, sat in front of the blank page and the words started flowing on the paper.
The final effect? Graham Greene was so disappointed with the book, that his first idea was to publish it under different name.
My judgement is quite opposite, I prefer The Confidential Agent over The Power and the Glory.
The book was written in 1939, aftermath of the Spanish civil war. Graham Greene mentions, that the Munich Agreement of 1937 was also affecting his thoughts.
The book - Mr D. an agent of a revolutionary government of the country in the state of civil war comes to England to buy coal, which is essential to his government survival. From the very start he is plagued with innumerable misfortunes, troubles and oppression. Some imaginary, some real.
He reaches London where he meets his local contact and realizes, that nobody trusts him and that he cannot trust even people nominally representing his government.
Finally he arrives at the meeting with coal mines board of directors, negotiates a feasible deal and then discovers, that somehow his credentials disappeared, have been stolen. The contract is taken over by anti-government opposition.
This is too much, he converts into a hunter thirsty for blood of his oppressors. His hunt turns into a comedy of errors. He resigns and resorts to the last resort - meet coal miners' trade union and appeal to their solidarity with working class of his country.
The result is predictable.
And then, when everything failed, he is miraculously rescued.
I think, that the effects of Benzedrine are obvious - enormous density of actions and counteractions and the miraculous ending. On the other hand I liked the book, main reason was the main character fighting and ready for an ultimate sacrifice for a cause which is alien to him.