Details
Synopsis
English expatriate Wormold, who sells vacuum cleaners in Havana, becomes entangled in British government affairs at the beginning of the story and is pressed into service as an operative of M.I.5. He agrees reluctantly, so as to earn some extra money for his 17-year-old daughter's education, but does not bother to engage in any actual espionage. Instead, he submits wholly fictitious reports that are taken seriously at Whitehall and foment an elaborate diplomatic crisis in Havana. In the end, Wormold finds that his imaginary maneuvers take on a life of their own.
| Details | | Series: | Twentieth Century Classics Series |
| Size | | Height: | 8.0 in | | Width: | 5.0 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 6.4 oz |
Industry Reviews
"Say what you will, this is a distinguished narrative idea, worthy of its distinguished author. Had he taken a walk around the block, decided to believe his own tale, and told it with simple conviction, it might have been hair-raising, all the more so from his personal knowledge of its background. Instead, he has used tricks, and achieved mostly unreality. His characters lack bone, flesh and blood, and only occasionally seem lifelike. They are dumb when convenience requires, rarely showing initiative on their own. The mystery doesn't mystify but mainly begets confusion, and the same can be said for the daughter's Catholicism....All in all, as 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."
New York Times Book Review - James M. Cain (10/26/1958)
"We remember that Mr. Greene has won competition prizes for parodies of himself; Entertainment or not, we may have some difficulty in keeping up our spirits when his drollery so closely resembles his despair....If you value the true novelist's power of unexpected invention, and enjoy watching a master at work on a plot--deftly building into a perfectly sound structure an element of pure absurdity--you will want to read 'Our Man in Havana'."
Spectator - Frank Kermode (10/10/1958)
"Graham Greene's most recent book is another of those superior thrillers of his, which are among the best reading matter on the middle ground between escapist entertainment and the serious novel."
Atlantic Monthly - Charles J. Rolo (11/19/1958)
"'Our Man in Havana' is wholly delightful; in its deftness of invention and superb timing it beguiles like a Clair film. If we need any reminder here it is; when it comes to telling a story, however light, the implications of which go beyond the surface narrative, there is still no one to touch Greene."
New Statesman - Walter Allen (10/11/1958)
"A cold, thin, generally fascinating story....The end, which takes place in London, is in keeping with the plot, which is ironic, fantastic, and, in Mr. Greene's talented and contemptuous hands, plausible."
Allen
"The chill of lurking dread is no longer so chilly, the pace no longer so breathless as in Greene's earlier thrillers. He cannot resist slipping in a cruel, pointless caricature of a dumb U.S. businessman, or an unlikely scene in a top-secret conference, at which Wormold's secretary sprays the green baize with Greene bitterness. Such interludes damage the 'entertainment,' but they cannot really spoil the unique formula of suspense plus sin."
Allen
"The essential complaint against the book is that Mr. Greene is wanting in sense of form, but such criticism becomes feeble when confronted by the cardinal fact that the author has set out to do something extremely difficult and has abundantly succeeded in doing it. He offers an entertainment and from the beginning to the end of this book he entertains."
Allen
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