Getting to Know the General

Greene, Graham

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Language: English

Published by Lester & Orpen Dennys Publishers Limited, 1984

0886190762 / 9780886190767

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Seller: Past Pages, Oshawa, ON, CanadaPast Pages

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BOOK: Light Shelf Rub to Boards; Edges Lightly Soiled; Slight Yellowing Due to Age. DUST JACKET: Lightly Creased; Lightly Chipped; In Archival Quality Jacket Cover. SUB-TITLE: The Story of an Involvement. JACKET DESIGN: Public Good. CONTENTS: Foreword; Part I, 1976; Part II, 1977; Part III, 1978; Part IV, 1979 and 1980; Epilogue; Postscript. SYNOPSIS: In the winter of 1976, Graham Greene was invited to Panama by Omar Torrijos, the charismatic general who had taken power in 1968. His book is an account of that visit and the friendship that continued through subsequent visits. Graham Greene's penetrating and moving descriptions of Panama and its people reconfirm his mastery of travel writing, and the extraordinary Torrijos--complex, courageous, deeply democratic and profoundly human--emerges as one of the most fascinating characters in all of Graham Greene's books. Graham Greene writes in his Preface: "In August 1981 my bag was packed for my fifth visit to Panama when the news came to me over the telephone of the death of General Omar Torrijos Herrera, my friend and host. The small plane in which he was flying to a house which he owned at Coclesito in the mountains of Panama had crashed, and there were no survivors. A few days later the voice of his security guard, Sergeant Chuchu, alias Jose de Jesus Martinez, ex-Professor of Marxist Philosophy at Panama University, Professor of Mathematics and a poet, told me, 'There was a bomb in the plane. I know there was a bomb in the plane, but I can't tell you why over the telephone.' "At that moment the idea came to me to write a short personal memoir, based on the diaries which I had kept over the last five years, as a tribute to a man whom during that time I had grown to love. But as soon as I had written the first sentences after the title, Getting to Know the General, I realized that it was not only the General whom I had got to know over those five years--it was also Chuchu, perhaps the only man in the National Guard whom the General trusted completely, and it was this bizarre and beautiful little country, split in two by the Canal and the American Zone, a country which had become, thanks to the General, of great practical importance in the struggle for liberation taking place in Nicaragua and El Salvador." Graham Greene was born in 1904 in Berkhamsted, England. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.

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Title
Getting to Know the General
Author
Greene, Graham
Publisher
Lester & Orpen Dennys Publishers Limited
Publication year
1984
Condition
As New
Dust jacket
As New
Binding
Hard Cover
Language
English
ISBN 10
0886190762
ISBN 13
9780886190767
Seller catalogs
Biography - Political Figures

Past Pages

Oshawa, ON, Canada

5-star seller

AbeBooks seller since January 2, 2008

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For a good portion of the 1990's, our family was interested in the idea of entering the used book business. We are all avid readers, book lovers, and book collectors who cannot pass a bookstore without popping in. Family trips to the library and our local used bookstore were a regularity while growing up. With each of us having interests in different genres (with a little overlapping here and there), we cover a lot of bases. The thought of having a store of our own was appealing, and the hunt was on - both for stock and a location. We thought to combine under one roof many different things that would appeal to readers and book lovers. Not only used books, but some new items as well. Bookmarks (to ward off dog-eared pages), bookends (to keep those out-of-control collections under control), bookplates (to label books on the "Can I borrow that?" circuit to ensure that they always found their way home), book repair tape (to lend a helping hand to collectors with tattered favourites in their collections), and so on. With an interest in book-themed knick knacks as well, we had two sides to our would-be business: books and knick-knacks. Hence the business was born. In the early part of 1998 we bought a commercial property, and in the summer we first opened our doors in a storefront in Uxbridge, Ontario, Canada. With start-up stock consisting of a garage full of books hand-picked for just such a venture that we purchased from someone who changed their plans, we were in business. For several years we operated in this storefront, growing our business and learning about the industry and the backbone of it - the customers. It was very satisfying to be present at the end of someone's book quest, as we were quite often. Many a time we heard shouts of joy from somewhere in the shop as customers happened upon just what they'd been looking for (oftentimes for quite a while). At other times, people would approach us with bits and pieces of information that they remembered from long ago favourites in hopes that we could at least help them come up with an author or title to help in their search, which we often times did, with the book in hand. And when we couldn't come up with anything on our own, we would pick the brains of other customers in conversation, or turn to the internet for help for them. For us, quality and selection of stock go hand-in-hand with customer service. One isn't much good without the other. But times, people, places, and lives change and after several years in our storefront we made a change of our own - in 2004 we relocated to the internet. Now a home-based business in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, we are gradually bringing our inventory online here. We carry used paperbacks, hardbacks, and magazines for both adults and children. We have thousands upon thousands of books that are not yet listed for sale on the internet, but are gradually making their way there.

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