Our Man in Havana (Penguin Classics)

What if Cold War hysteria had reached such a pitch that spymasters would accept the most transparent fictions as truth? That’s the conceptual basis underlying this terrific novel, or “entertainment” as Greene called it, which manages to pull off the trick of being at once highly suspenseful and laugh-out-loud funny.A British vacuum-cleaner salesman based in Havana on the eve of revolution takes advantage of the his country’s intelligence service’s hunger for information and makes up an entire spy ring to finance the demands of his precocious teenage daughter. Such is the premise of Our Man in Havana, in which Greene creates a wonderful cast of living characters: the fictionalizing spy himself, James Wormold, his beautiful and manipulative daughter Milly, his doomed German friend Hasselbacher, the evil Captain Segura—modeled on Fulgenico Batista’s actual right hand henchman, Captain Esteban Ventura Novo—and an assortment of comically bungling British spies and spy-masters.Published in October of 1958, the book is astonishingly prescient in its portrayal of Havana on the eve of the Cuban Revolution, which was fated to descend from the Sierra Maestra mountains and expel Batista from power less than three months later, on New Year’s Day of 1959. But the qualities of this novel extend well beyond its status as an amusingly accurate snapshot of history. There are two additional aspects I found particularly striking. The first is how well Greene captures the physical cityscape of Havana, which I can attest, as someone who’s visited the city frequently since 1999, really hasn’t changed very much. Here’s one of many examples of Greene getting the details exactly right:“The long city lay spread along the open Atlantic; waves broke over the Avenida de Maceo and misted the windscreens of cars. The pink, grey, yellow pillars of what had once been the aristocratic quarter were eroded like rocks; an ancient coat of arms, smudged and featureless, was set over the doorway of a shabby hotel, and the shutters of a night-club were varnished in bright crude colors to protect them from the wet and salt of the sea.”Where else but in Cuba can one can read a passage that was written in 1958 but could have been written yesterday? It really enhances one’s appreciation for the time warp that is contemporary Havana. For this reason and others, if you’ve traveled to Cuba or are planning to, this novel is an essential item on your reading list.Another great thing about this novel is the complexity and insightfulness of its thematic underpinnings, particularly the truth that when it comes to international intelligence, made-up things and fairy tales have a way of taking on a life of their own, as in this passage, where Wormold reflects on what the British spymaster, Hawthorne, has in common with his very Catholic daughter, Milly:“He was glad that she could still accept fair stories: a virgin who bore a child, pictures that wept or spoke words of love in the dark. Hawthorne and his kind were equally credulous, but what they swallowed were nightmares, grotesque stories out of science fiction.”Do you think Dick Cheney or Paul Wolfowitz ever read Our Man in Havana? (I suppose it would be too much to ask whether George W. Bush ever did.) Anyway “grotesque stories” are exactly what Wormold feeds his overlords. With the creative gusto of a novelist on a roll, the vacuum cleaner salesman invents a colorful ring of made-up Cuban spies, along with a massive weapons installation in the Sierra Maestra mountains that is actually based on the parts of a vacuum cleaner.The indictment of the entire Cold War ideological zeitgeist couldn't be clearer, and strikes me as a particularly acute insight when it comes to US policy toward Cuba, which was built on exaggeration and outright fictionalization for more than fifty years.The only thing that mars this edition is a stuffy introduction by Christopher Hitchens, in which he makes a few weakly supported and petulant remarks on parts of the book he sees as less effective, and then attempts to put his own hackneyed right-wing spin on Greene’s insightful and prescient portrayals not only of Cuba in the immediate lead-up to Revolution, but of the sublime ridiculousness of Cold War politics.But the novel itself: yes. This entertaining masterwork is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the fifties, the Cold War, and/or the Cuban Revolution. Highly recommended!If you’re interested in more on Cuba and the growing travel opportunities to the country, check out my website: (...)

I am a true reader of this author now. I’ll buy his other books to read. It started with the Quiet American which I really liked and now our man in Havana. A truly gifted writer. Each book has been a history class that has been a page turner. Our man in Havana is funny but it’s strange how the events written in this book before the missile crisis eventually did happen. This book took me back to a time when I wish I could have visited Havana before it became off limits for Americans. A fascinating read of a character living there and his life being changed forever after by someone browsing vacuum cleaners at his store. Thank you for another good book.

Our Man in Havana, published in 1958 just months before Castro's coup, captures the earlier Cold War years in a Havana that was a pit of intrigue though the unanswerable questions of who is an agent and who isn't, and to what recognizable side does anyone belong make it comic and very dangerous at the same time. This is the story of an expat Brit in Havana, a vacuum cleaner salesman who has no real allegiance to politics of any stripe but who allows himself to be recruited to spy for the mother country since, as a single parent with a high maintenance teenage daughter, he's got bills to pay.The one thing Jim Wormold rightly assesses is, no one knows what is really going on. The directions from the home office are so vague that it is easy enough to invent agents and reports and not get caught, even when the home office sends the lovely agent Beatrice to pose as his secretary. It does not take long, though, for his deceptions to be picked up as truth, which multiplies the absurd intrigues and pushes him into the sinister heart of a place where a local police captain who lusts after Wormold's daughter coolly delivers a scary appraisal of who belongs to the "torturable" and "untorturable" classes. The ending is very funny but there are some tragedies leading up to it, the collateral damage of operating in the vortex of the world's political and moral ambiguities. Our Man in Havana is a run up of sorts to Greene's later novel The Human Factor, in which nothing is funny at all but the same question is asked of both protagonists: what do you put first, family or country?Christopher Hitchens provides a decent critical introduction to the Penguin edition and like all critical introductions it is pocked with spoilers, so read it as an afterward. He puts the novel in context with Greene's life and literary themes. Our Man in Havana was out there, complete with an agent number assigned by the home office, before James Bond and before George Smiley. With the Cold War robbed of its meaning after the Berlin Wall came down, and with intelligence mangled by political ambitions in the early 21st century, it is interesting to see that these stalwarts of the spy genre still have something with which to amuse or soberly ponder the world.

This is a very smart and funny book, I like my Greene more humorous than overtly Catholic.If you like this you should really explore Anthony Burgess beyond Clockwork Orange.I would just ask you, should you get this edition, to skip the introduction by Christopher Hitchens, which is sour--I'm assuming whiskey sour. It will ruin the experience. Listening to a drunk go of in a bar is ok--once.

Kindle version is a play that is adapted from the novel. I should have paid more attention, but was irritated to learn that the kindle version of Greene's classic is an adaptation. I opened it up to read in Havana and was disappointed.The adaptation itself was fine and I'd watch the play, just not what I was hoping to read.

Classic spy satire.

Still a classic nearly 80 years after publication.Greene's wonderful tale of uncorroborated intelligence.Funny, yet tragic.A short read, but a great read. I'm off now for a daiquiri , or probably two. (Read it, you'll understand the reference)