Our Man in Havana: An Entertainment - Softcover

GREENE Graham

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140017909 ISBN 13: 9780140017908

Publisher: Penguin, 1973

Synopsis

Wormold's daughter had reached an expensive age - so he accepted Hawthorne's offer of 300-plus dollars a month and became Agent 59200/5, MI6's man in Havana. To keep the job, he pretends to recruit sub-agents and sends fake stories. Then they come true.

About this title

Review:

Graham Greene's new "Entertainment" offers only a questionable diversion this time, substitutes a lightminded travesty of secret service operations (the intentions are not too clearly decipherable) for the surer suspense of the earlier books in this genre. Wormold, a vacuum cleaner representative in Havana, a middle-aged man whose daughter is his prime security interest, is tapped as secret agent number 59200 stroke five by the British Secret Service. With "no accomplice except the credulity of other men", Wormold turns in bogus reports and fabulous diagrams (vacuum cleaner parts), recruits an extensive payroll of imaginary sub-agents, and rigs an elaborate deception which backfires when one of his men materializes- only to be killed, his friend Hasselbacher is a second victim, and he is a potential third... For all the occasional overtones and undercuts, this is no more than a genial form of nonsense in which Greene is not at his best. This still may be good enough for a great many people to whom the name assumes more than is this time assured. (Kirkus Reviews)

Book Description:

'No serious writer of this century has more thoroughly invaded and shaped the public imagination than did Graham Greene' Time

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1973
• ISBN 10: 0140017909
• ISBN 13: 9780140017908
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224