Our Man in Havana
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| Our Man in Havana | |
| Author | Graham Greene |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Heinemann |
| Publication date | December 1958 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 273 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
| Followed by | A Burnt-Out Case |
Our Man In Havana (1958) is a novel by British author Graham Greene. Certain aspects of the plot, in particular the importance of rocket-launchers, appear to predict the Cuban Missile Crisis, which took place in 1962.
It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1959, directed by Carol Reed and starring Alec Guinness. It has recently been adapted into a play by Clive Francis which premiered at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre Guildford on the 23rd August 2007.
Contents |
[edit] Background
In August 1941, Graham Greene joined the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6). An interesting sidelight of Greene's tenure in the SIS is the story of Garcia: a double agent in Lisbon, who fed the Nazis disinformation, pretending to control a ring of agents all over England, while all he was doing was inventing armed forces movements and operations from maps, guides and standard military references. Garcia was the inspiration for Wormold, a character in Our Man In Havana.
[edit] Plot summary
The novel is set in Cuba during the regime of Fulgencio Batista (which was to be overthrown by Castro). James Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman, meets Hawthorne, who offers him work for the British secret service. Wormold lives alone (his wife has left him for another man) with his teenage daughter, Milly. Since Wormold does not make enough money to grant all his daughter's wishes, he decides to take the offer. For lack of any real information to send the secret service, Wormold begins to deceive them by claiming that he has a network of agents, who actually are people that he knows only by sight. He carries his reports to extremes by sending his clients in London a circuit diagram of a vacuum cleaner, telling them that this is a sketch of a secret rocket launching-ramp. In London nobody except Hawthorne, who alone knows that Wormold sells vacuum cleaners, doubts this report. Nevertheless Hawthorne does not tell his boss about his doubts. To help Wormold the secret service sends him a secretary, Beatrice Severn, and other assistants.
Beatrice has to contact his "agent" Raúl. To avoid this, Wormold lies that Raúl is on the way to take more photos of the rocket launchramp. Wormold soon learns that a pilot named Raúl had had an accident and died on the way to the airport. Beatrice tells Wormold they have to save the other supposed agents because there was an assassination attempt on Doctor Cifuentes (also a "spy"). Meanwhile, London finds out that the other side wants to kill Wormold during a trade association meeting. They are going to poison him. Wormold succeeds in unmasking Carter, the enemy spy, and spills the whiskey that had been poisoned.
Wormold has to get the list of names of the other enemy spies. Captain Segura, who wants to marry Milly, is in possession of it. Wormold gets Segura drunk in a game of checkers where bottles of Scotch and whiskey are the game pieces. The captain falls asleep and Wormold takes his gun and a microphoto of the list. He wants to take revenge on Carter and murders him at night with Segura's weapon. Wormold sends the photo to London but it is overexposed.
Hawthorne and the secret service are then told about the deception. Beatrice, who finally learns the truth from Wormold and loves the scam and ingenuity of Wormold, is summoned to London, as well as Wormold. Rather than admit they were taken in by his invented sketch along with the fear the embarrassing story could not be classified from being published by discharging Wormold, the top officers of the service assign Wormold to headquarters and decorate him with "the medal of Order of the British Empire". Wormold and Beatrice want to marry and Milly agrees.
[edit] Cuba's Attitude to the Novel
The revolutionary government of Cuba allowed Our Man in Havana to be filmed in the Cuban capital, but Castro complained that the novel did not accurately portray the brutality of the Batista regime. Greene commented:
Alas, the book did me little good with the new rulers in Havana. In poking fun at the British Secret Service, I had minimized the terror of Batista's rule. I had not wanted too black a background for a light-hearted comedy, but those who suffered during the years of dictatorship could hardly be expected to appreciate that my real subject was the absurdity of the British agent and not the justice of a revolution.
Greene returned to Havana between 1963 and 1966, but his disagreement with the regime's treatment of Catholics, intellectuals, and homosexuals left him at odds with the government, and his work is not commemorated in Cuba. [1]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Baker, Christopher P. (2006). Cuba: Moon Handbooks. Worzalla. ISBN 1-56691-802-2
[edit] See also
- The Tailor of Panama (1996), a novel by John le Carré inspired by Our Man in Havana.
