Our Man in Havana

Heard so much about Graham Greene since school days that eventually I bought the book from the store to satisfy my curiosity. It was a letdown.

Every character seems to be drinking and drinking on every conceivable occasion. Probably because of the alcohol, the dialogues are fuzzy and meandering. The story is supposed to be hilarious, with the British intelligence chiefs going gaga over the design of a vacuum cleaner that they thought represents some secret device. And when the hero (the vacuum cleaner salesman) is exposed as a fraud, he is rewarded with a service decoration and a new job as an instructor. The only character whose conversation is interesting and convincing is the hero's daughter who remains true to her calculating, materialistic nature.

Following this book, I went on to read The Human Factor. Same wooden, unsuspenseful plot development, same non-stop drinking. Again only one character is interesting, the doctor who comes across as sinister, willing to kill at the slightest excuse. The unreal aspect is his colleagues know he has poisoned one of the junior subordinates, yet they happily continue to eat and drink with him, not at all concerned that he might also slip some of the untraceable toxin into their drinks.

I forgot just how great a writer Graham Greene was. He apparently considered this novel just an "Entertainment", and it is clearly a lot lighter than his great novels The Heart of the Matter and The Power and the Glory. The humor in this book is first rate. But it is a substantial novel in its own right, as Greene very effectively lampoons the modern fascination with international politics. There are a lot things more important than one's work or even one's country, as Greene rather amusingly points out.

A terrific and entertaining novel.

I’ve read Greene’s The Quiet American (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) three times. He was amazingly prescient in depicting the complete inability of the CIA’s agent, Alden Pyle, to see the reality of Vietnam that was before him. Rather, Pyle chose to view everything through the prism of the Ivy League academic theories of Professor York Harding. My copy of “Our Man in Havana” came with an introduction by Christopher Hitchens. In the intro, Hitchens indicates much the same, including: “…Greene seemed to have an almost spooky prescience when it came to the suppurating political slums on the periphery of America’s Cold War Empire.” And, “… the mandarins of MI6 are eager to deceive themselves, and to be deceived, and they get no more than what they ask for.’

Cuba is again “topical,” as the United States has finally decided, after more than half a century, to “kiss and make-up” with the Communist government led by Raul Castro, brother of Fidel, who seized power from the dictator, Fulgencio Batista shortly after “Our Man in Havana” was first published. Greene knew a thing or two about the British intelligence services, since he once worked for them, recruited during the Second World War, by his sister, who worked for MI6. His initial posting was in Sierra Leone. His novel is a wonderful slap-stick farce… that, in all likelihood, accurately depicts the meaningless levels of intrigue, and the pre-disposition of the “intelligence” leadership to hear, as Simon and Garfunkel once famously sang: “A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards all the rest.”

Jim Wormold is a failing British vacuum cleaner salesman, working in Havana. He has yet to sell one model of the company’s latest product, the “Atomic” (vacuum cleaner!). He is estranged from his wife, and is attempting to raise his daughter, Milly (Seraphina), now in her teen-age years. She is both a devote Catholic (the father is not), as well as more than a bit of a hooligan. She also aspires to higher economic levels in society, commencing with the ownership of a horse. Her aspirations are clearly beyond Wormold’s ability to fulfill, and thus he is an easy “mark” that can be recruited by Hawthorne, an MI6 operative. In farcical style, the recruitment takes place in the bathroom of a restaurant, with the water running (to make it more difficult to pick up the sound on the microphones!).

Wormold seems to intuitively understand the “great game,” and simply makes up all the intelligence, including the “agents” that are working for him. He pockets their salary and expenses, thereby funding the needs of his daughter. Meanwhile, back in London, Hawthorne’s boss, a senior MI6 operative, believes he has an intuitive understanding of Wormold, one of the “merchant princes” of the British Empire. There are a number of other well-wrought characters, including Captain Segura, a Ministry of the Interior “enforcer” of the Batista regime. (“only certain classes of people are subjected to torture…”)

Real life imitating fiction? Greene has produced a satirical masterpiece, and if the reader considers it “over the top,” one need only consider the crazy machination involving the presentation of “intelligence” on Iraq’s purported “weapons of mass destruction” including those famous aluminum tubes, based on the testimony of a defector with the ever-so-apt code name of “curveball.”

In ways, Greene’s novels on Vietnam, Cuba and Haiti constitute a trilogy on imperial folly. I will soon read the third volume, The Comedians (Penguin Classics) on Haiti. As with other novels of Greene, alcohol is also a main “character.” A pithy summation of Greene’s view of life is provided by Hitchens: “The human condition seen through the bottom of a glass darkly…” “Our Man in Havana” is a most memorable novel. 5-stars, plus.

This is one of the best black comedies ever written. Previously, Graham Greene had not been especially noted for his funny bone. Instead, he excelled at very serious fare like The Power and the Glory, The End of the Affair and The Quiet American, but in Our Man in Havana he taps his inner Evelyn Waugh to produce a deadpan masterpiece.

The story concerns James Wormold, a middle-aged vacuum cleaner salesman living in pre-Castro Cuba with his 17-going-on-27-year-old daughter Milly. Milly is a high-maintenance teen whose passive-aggressive demands strain Wormold's modest financial resources until he is approached by a British secret service operative and asked to function as a local agent, a position that comes with access to considerable expense moneys.

Wormold takes on the job and proceeds to invent local sources (some based on real people) and even a mysterious secret installation in the jungle to mollify his superiors. These spying successes deliver a satisfying cash flow until the fictional world Wormold created starts getting too real, putting real people in danger and worse. This is where the "black" part of the "black comedy" comes in.

Still, it's all a wonderful takeoff on James Bond-esque spy thrillers, with even a kind of "M" figure overseeing the British spy operations from London. It also provides a fascinating portrayal of Cuba just before the Communist takeover and serves as a sort of companion piece to Greene's earlier The Quiet American, which took place in another Cold War hot spot, Vietnam, and contributed to Greene' reputation as some kind of foreign policy seer. Personally, I found Greene's view of politics here very naive, with its who-cares-about-countries-and-governments attitude. It's always easy to blather about how you don't care about such things when you live in a Great Britain or United States. Had Greene been a citizen of the Soviet Union or China (where the Great Leap Forward was about starve tens of millions to death just as Our Man in Havana was hitting bookstore shelves) maybe he wouldn't have been as blasé.

Still, this is a tremendously entertaining piece of work and very highly recommended.

A character who is common, but uncommon and in unusual circumstances and you have a classic satire written by a master of literature. Not to mention a jolly good read. Greene writes a clever novel that pokes fun at the cold war era.

The story is about a colonial relic, a old style trader, who sells vacuum cleaners in Havana. He gets recruited by a nameless British spy agency and told he has to recruit operators. He creates a phoney spy network and cashes in on the payroll to support his daughter’s expensive hobbies. Fantasy becomes reality and the protagonist has to pay the piper and actually function as a spy.

The setting is revolutionary Cuba and the nightlife of Havana make for a exotic back ground that adds danger and excitement to the yarn. The star Mr Wormold is British and in the mold of an colonial type. He is common; he yearns for his ex, loves and supports his daughter, he muddles through, and cares about his friends. His name is uncommon. It is symbolic for worm and old, and war and mold. These traits can be found in his character. The reader becomes familiar with him and his thoughts when his first name is introduced later in the story; “after all this time I never knew your first name.” Which summed up the character succinctly.

This is a plot driven story, but the characters are rich, making the story shine. Greene spent some time abroad and served in espionage so I wonder how much of Mr Wormold is a self portrait? He does capture the image of a colonial type quite well and the character is interesting to say the least. I like Greene’s works and recommend the author to anybody.

I really love Graham Greene's witty and sardonic writing. He has that talent for being really hilarious at one time, and at the next, super sad. As Christopher Hitchens mentions in his introduction, Greene divided his books into "novels" and "entertainments". I believe Our Man in Havana is an entertainment, and it certainly shows. There's lots of whimsy in this one, and the whole plot is completely ludicrous. Wormold is a vacuum-cleaner salesman in Havana, when he is randomly recruited by Hawthorne, a British secret agent. He is set to report on economic and military goings-on in Cuba, and begins concocting wild reports based on Tales from Shakespeare by Charles Lamb and dreaming up military installations from vacuum designs. Then his stories start becoming true...

This book is complicated. At first glance, it seems like just a funny espionage thriller (seems like an oxymoron, doesn't it?). But the book it's not. I had a lot of favorite quotes, one of which was "Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it." And I think that's really true. Once you reach the top of the order, so to speak, then you forget what it was like to be at the bottom. And "'There is always time for a Scotch.' It was obvious from the way he pronounced Scotch that Dr Hasselbacher had already had time for a great many..." Being a fancy way of saying that he is rather drunk.

The part that really got me laughing was when..."'You called me, Senor Vormell.' For some reason the name Wormold was quite beyond Lopez' (his servant's) power of pronunciation, but as he seemed unable to settle on a satisfactory substitute, it was seldom that Wormold went by the same name twice." Lopez goes on in the ensuing paragraphs to call Wormold "Vomell", "Ommel", "Vormole", "Venell", and "Vommold." It was hilarious.

Enough quotes (though there are many more, detailed in the excellent introduction ). Our Man in Havana is one of my favorite Graham Greene novels so far, better than The Quiet American and just as good as Travels With My Aunt. I may have to buy it now, it was so good. It's hilarious at times, entertaining, and also thought-provoking. My favorite kind of novel.

All of my reviews can be read at my blog novareviews.blogspot.com.

This is a nice introduction for those who have not read Greene, and also a great title for his fans to enjoy. This is not as heavy in serious, darker meaning as many of his other works. Instead the overall tone is a rather witty and sarcastic, much in the vein of Vonnegut (his later titles especially), though not as absurd as Heller's works. It is a spoof on the 'Intelligence' business and has much in common with another novel by an author obviously influenced by Green, John la Carre's 'Tailor of Panama'.

In this quirky novel Jim Wormold is approached and basically bullied into working as a spy for England while he lives in Cuba selling vacuums. Wormold figures if he has to do the job, he might as well profit from it, so he goes about embezzling the government funds by creating fictitious agents and expenses. He fabricates false reports, and even notifies England that people he knows of are his spies, when in reality they don't even know Jim. Things seem to be going well for awhile, but suddenly it all gets too real. Something that Jim is working on catches the interest of certain parties, and he gets caught up in a life or death struggle. By then he has built too sturdy of a facade, so even trying to explain that he 'made things up' isn't believed. Those he tries to convince think it is part of his role as an agent and he is trying to diffuse the situation.

There are a ton of fun characters in this novel. The characters are what remind me most of a Vonnegut or Heller novel. They are often so obsessed with looking at the big picture that they don't notice the details; kind of seeing the forest and not the trees.

Greene has a wonderful style of prose, and it is a real treat to read. His short stories especially highlight his amazing style, though their meanings are often less satirical and darker. If you like la Carre, then you would enjoy this novel. If you have an open mind for witty and sarcastic stories, then give it a read. I found myself unable to put the book down. It does clock in at 250 pages, so it's not a quick read, but it isn't one that requires studious reading so it does flow nicely. Highly recommended reading from one of the great English novelists of the 20th century.

... about a really funny book except "Read it! You won't be sorry! You'll split a seam!"

But I won't spoil any of the humor by explaining it; let's just declare that it's verrry Brrrritish. Besides, you've probably seen the movie, right? With Alec Guinness, whom else? I do have something to say about the milieu of the novel -- Graham Greene calls it an 'entertainment rather than a novel -- which was published first in England in 1958. Presumably, therefore, it was written in 1957 or earlier. How well do you know the history of Cuba before Castro? Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was in the middle of his second stint as "the United States-aligned Cuban President, dictator and military leader" -- to quote wikipedia -- a police-state regime that lasted until 1959. Batista's tyranny was lurid, sadistic, financially and morally corrupt on a scale rivaled by few of history's true villains. Interestingly, Batista is never mentioned in "Our Man in Havana". Neither is Fidel Castro, though the presence of "rebels' in the hinterlands is rumored, chiefly as an excuse for police brutality; there were two classes of people in Cuba, according to one police officer ... those who could be tortured, i.e. the Poor, and those who couldn't. Greene's characters are chiefly the latter, the rich and the foreigners, the sort whom it's 'safer' to murder than to torture. Does it sound a bit like an Ian Fleming spy thriller? The first half dozen 'James Bond' novels were written in the same decade as "Our Man in Havana". One could, i suppose, puzzle over the question of who was spoofing whom?

"Our Man" -- our reluctant spy, that is -- is the Cuban agent for a British vacuum cleaner manufacturer. Needing to send "something of interest" to his 'intelligence' paymasters in London, Our Man draws a diagram of his most up-to-date vacuum, scales it the size of an airplane hanger, and reports that it's 'under construction' deep in the mountains of the interior. Needless to say, the "world" is petrified with alarm, and headquarters wants photos, which Our Man is at absurd pains not to send. Remember the "Cuban Missile Crisis" of 1962, when photos of exactly such a secret construction in the Mountains of Cuba were taken by a U2 pilot? Hmmm ... do you suppose Nikita Krushchev was a Graham Greene fan?

"Our Man in Havana" is far more a satire than a spy thriller, although I'm sure it has been, and will be, associated with the works of Fleming and John Le Carré. To my mind, the most apt comparison would be to Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent". It's not as original or as profound as Conrad's spy spoof, but it will perhaps be easier for a reader of 2011 to catch the jokes.

Greene is best known (deservedly) for his serious "Catholic novels," but he also was fascinated with the world of espionage, and he was perfectly capable of writing archetypal British dry humor. Put those together and you have a very funny book, set in the last days of the Batista dictatorship in Cuba. Mr. Wormold, a middle-aged ex-pat, runs the Cuban franchise for the Phastkleaner Company, purveyors of the Atomic Pile Vacuum Cleaner. Though there's nothing actually "atomic" about it, as he has to keep explaining to nervous potential customers. He's been in Havana a long time, and married a local girl who subsequently left him and ran off to New York. Now it's just him and his stunningly gorgeous 17-year-old daughter, Milly -- an adamant Catholic when she wants to be (when the "invisible duenna" is walking beside her) and a considerable handful when she doesn't. Wormold makes enough to get by but Milly, a competition-level shopper, now wants a horse. Which also means special clothes, and a saddle and tack, and stabling -- and a country club membership, so she'll have a place to ride. Where is he going to get that kind of money? Fate plays along in the shape of an Englishman called Hawthorne, sent by MI-6 in London to build a network of informants in the Caribbean. Before he quite knows it, Wormold has been recruited and told to develop his own local network and send in reports on the Cuban economy, military operations, relations with the Russians, and internal politics. Of course, he has no idea how to do any of that. But then his old friend, a retired German doctor named Hasselbacher, suggests he simply make up his agents and his reports -- it's a lot safer and London will never know the difference (and so events prove). And Milly can have her horse. That's the set-up and Greene (as Wormold) has a great time creating agents from all walks of life, gathering data from the newspapers and from government reports, and claiming expenses and bonuses from his paymasters. London is delighted -- so delighted, they send Wormold a couple of specialists to help run his station -- one of them a very attractive young lady who rather turns his head. It's not a long book, only a little over two hundred pages, but it's a lot of fun. Incidentally, this novel was a reworking of a screenplay idea Greene had pitched a few years before, set in the Baltic in 1938. The Crown censors told him to forget it because the movie would have made fun of the Secret Service. Can't have that, can we?

Greene creates a laugh-out-loud scenario of a vacuum salesman in Havana, right before Castro, hired by Whitehall to be the UK Intelligence "Man in Havana." He has no qualifications, except for high resiliency, imagination and a will to succeed, especially since he could use the money. Thus, he creates an elaborate (but wholly fictitious) network of "sub-agents" and concocts bogus "reports" that titillate his superiors so much that they send him support staff (whom he must also deceive) and keep approving "expense" reports. Local friends and Havana top police add to the hijinks. The hilarity takes a potentially lethal turn when enemy powers decide to take him out of the equation; he's a victim of his own fabricated "success"! Although some of the humor now (nearly 60 years later) seems a bit quaint, this book by a masterful writer must rank at the top for parodies of spycraft; any fan of the genre will get a huge kick out of this fun-filled read.

Wormold is a British national living in Havana who tries to make a living by selling vacuum cleaners. However, sales are not going so well and part of the blame can be attributed to the new model "Atomic Pile Suction Cleaner," which aroused negative connotations at the height of the Cold War. At that exact point of despair, Wormold is being recruited by a British secret agent in order to establish a network of agents, and hence have a firmer "intelligence" grip in the Caribbean. Wormold sees this opportunity as a way to enrich himself and provide for his beautiful daughter. Yet, he knows that in order to ask for more funds from the agencies he needs to recruit agents. What could be better and easier than inventing these agents? Who could possibly know? However, after an easy and successful start, fictional events are starting to become reality. From there, it all goes sour.

As Hitchens says in the introduction, Greene classified his books into two categories, novels and entertainment. "Our Man in Havana" naturally falls into the entertainment category, and very good entertainment, I must say. Greene's writing is witty and funny and the characters are loveable (Geoffrey Rush would be perfect for the role of Wormold). If you expect nothing more than witty writing and pure entertainment, you cannot go wrong here.

James Wormold is a UK resident living in Havana during the 50s. He is a vacuum cleaner salesman (and not a particularly good one) who becomes increasingly worried about finding the funds to support his 17 yr old daughter's expensive hobbies. He wants to provide for her (and her equine interests - not cheap), but doesn't know how. Out of the blue, he is approached by another Englishman who recruits him to be Her Majesty's agent in Havana. They seal the deal in a public toilet. Wormold will get $300 per month plus expenses, and he needs to go out and recruit other agents and informants. The only problem is that he doesn't have the foggiest idea how to find any information that may be of interest. He does want any enterprising spy does - he just starts to make things up. Massive construction of a mysterious base in a remote mountain are of Cuba, detailed technical plans to a new super-weapon that is simply a drawing of his newest vacuum cleaner, etc. He claims to have recruited several agents, none of who he has actually met. All goes well (and Wormold regularly collects his paycheck), until London becomes intrigued and decides to send some help. Suddenly, one of his 'agents' is killed, and several others threatened, and Wormold is suddenly playing spy for real . . .

This story is a humorous spoof of spy thrillers. Definitely lots of laughs throughout, but I'd have to say not uniquely outstanding. Makes all the spies and spy games look like Keystone Kops! The ending is particularly well done. I've only read one other novel by Greene (Stamboul Train), so I'm not positioned to characterize this relative to his other works, but this is an entertaining and easy read by one of the 20th century's greatest novelists.

Graham Greene, a major, well-known 20th century British author, had a very long life, most of the century, and a very long and prolific writing career. He may be best known for The Third Man;The End of the Affair, and The Power and the Glory (Penguin Classics); but his books were greatly honored, highly-praised by the critics, generally best sellers, and often made into movies, as were the titles cited above. (The Third Man (50th Anniversary Edition) - Criterion Collection;The End of the Affair.( So was this one filmed,Our Man in Havana). The book is a later work of his, initially published on October 6, 1958, and just re-released. Greene famously divided his books into 'novels,' such as "The Power," and 'entertainments,' such as "Our Man." While working on the book at hand, he wrote to the Indian writer R.K. Narayan, a friend, that he was at work on "a rather hack job, an entertainment called 'Our Man in Havana.' I am getting too old to boil the pot." However, he also wrote to his mistress Catherine Walston in 1956 that "Our Man" was potentially a "very funny plot which if it comes off will make a footnote to history."

The book is set in Havana, Cuba, during the last days of the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and reproduces time and place very accurately on the page. The plot's reasonably gripping, and resonant. Like his later follower, John LeCarre, Greene had first-hand experience of the British Secret Service. On the recommendation of his lifelong friend Kim Philby, who turned out to be England's most notorious postwar spy/traitor, Greene had served in Africa's Sierra Leone during World War II, and this is a spy story. The lead character is Jim Wormold, an English seller of vacuum cleaners based in Havana. (Everyone can take a moment here to remember Alec Guinness as this character in the excellent movie based on the book.) Wormold is poor and desperate: his wife has left him, and he hasn't enough money to pay his hefty bar bills, let alone keep his beautiful teenage daughter Milly in her preferred lifestyle. So, without realizing what he's doing, or where it will take him and those he loves, he agrees to become a British spy; "Old Blighty's" man in Havana.

This may be an entertaining entertainment, but not to worry: there's plenty more serious Greene here. His instinctive anti-Americanism, left-wing viewpoints; and jaded cynicism as to the spy's life. His remarkable ability to create characters, even those who don't get many pages, such as Captain Segura, a local policeman/torture enthusiast, with a cigarette case made from human skin. Segura strongly resembles Batista's dread 'enforcer' Captain Ventura, and in his dark glasses and unmarked car, he will turn up again, and again, creating terror in various Latin American countries, most notably in Haitian dictator "Papa Doc" Duvalier's feared "toutons macoute."

Greene traveled widely, as a journalist, and to research his novels. He had great serendipity in his visits: many of them occurred at highly interesting times. "Our Man" was published in October, 1956; on New Years Day 1959 the revolutionary Fidel Castro came down from the mountains. The author set his Vietnamese war novel,The Quiet American (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition); (also an excellent film with Michael Caine, The Quiet American), just before the critical battle of Dien Bien Phu. He set The Comedians in the last days of Duvalier's Haiti. He had another stroke of luck: the long American blockade of Cuba has resulted in the country, and the city of Havana, staying much the same as the writer described them nearly fifty years ago.

All in all, think I'd have to go with "a very funny plot which if it comes off will make a footnote to history."

Wormold has an uneventful but stable life. He is a fortysomething Englishman living in Havana, where he stayed when he fell in love with a Cuban woman who has now left him for good, in the company of their 17 year old daughter, the cyinical, likable, and beautiful Milly. Wormold has a vacuum-cleaner shop, but business hasn't been going well lately, on account of political trouble in pre-Castro Cuba. Every day, at noon, Wormold goes to the bar to have a drink and a chat with his friend, the old doctor Hasselbacher. One day he meets an English stanger who starts harrassing him into becoming a spy for the British MI-6, the intelligence agency. Wormold doesn't really feel like it, him being a peaceful and risk-avoiding guy. But Milly does something silly which puts Wormold in serious economic problem. Plus, the MI-6 is willing to pay for his services, so reluctantly but with no choice, he accepts to spy for the British. As he is no social mingler, he finds nothing to report about, but report he must, if he wants the money to keep coming in. Hasselbacher gives him what seems to be good advice: since the information is to be secret, no one will know it but Wormold, so why not invent everything, including sub-agents whom will also have good salaries and travel expenses? Wormold follow this advice and begins to send fake reports, mainly about a weapons-system "currently being developed" by the Cubans in the Eastern mountains. London is shocked and surprised. Could Wormold provide some blueprints of the weapons? Sure, why not. Little by little, and then at speeding frenzy, things get out of control. Covert sub-agents, both those whose names were just taken from the Country Club directory, as well as those living only in Wormold's imagination, begin to die and suffer attacks. Reinforcements come from London. Wormold doesn't know what to do and he's afraid about sweet Milly, who is wanted as a wife by the chief of police, a noted torturer and corrupt man. What will Wormold do?

This book is as hilarious as you will get. Greene's black humor is wonderful and the characters are all likable in a spoofy way. Unwise recruitment of spies proves disastrous for the British government, but delicious for any reader of this crazy farce, one of the best spies books there are. Greene shows here, as always, a genius for plot and character-development, as well as a humor absent from his bleakest books, like "The Power and the Glory", or "A Burnt-Out Case". Great.

Graham Greene obviously had fun writing this wonderfully satiric send-up of the espionage business. I smiled through most of the book, and often laughed aloud, and yet the story never veers so far into farce that the reader is able to entirely forget the very real events in Russia and Cuba that made espionage a necessary evil during this perilous moment in world history.

Because this IS Graham Greene, the character development is a step above the norm: the main character, Wormold, is delightfully unexpected; his daughter is engagingly manipulative; and even the corrupt chief of police, a man who carries around a cigarette case fashioned from human skin, turns out to be something richer than the cartoon characiture of a bad guy he might have become in a less gifted author's hands. And it's not only espionage that falls victim to Greene's wit: he also hurls satiric darts at Catholicism, ugly Americans, Cuban culture, and do-gooder international organizations, to name a few.

In summary, thoroughly recommend this to anyone who enjoys their humor with a dose of intellectualism. I've read it twice already but its spot on my bookshelf is secure: one of these years I know I'll be back for more.

Jim Wormold is a vacuum cleaner seller ("Phastcleaners") in Havana. He owns a shop in Lamparilla Street where he lives with his seventeen year old daughter Milly who attends the American Convent School and is a devout Catholic. Among Wormold's acquaintances there is Dr Hasselbacher, an unstable character with a dubious past and the Red Vulture, Captain Segura, who is in love with Milly and wishes to marry her.

One day Wormold is approached by Hnery Hawthorne from the British Secret Service who is in the process of "setting up the Caribbean network". Hawthorne proposes to Wormold to do some spying for the Secret Service for a remuneration of $ 150 a month. One of his duties is to recruit agents who will be able to report to him on different matters (political, economic and technological). Wormold takes up Dr Hasselbacher's suggestion to simply invent such agents and so Raoul (an alcoholic Cubana air pilot), Rodriguez (a night club king) and Teresa (a dancer at a striptease place) are the names of "agents" which Wormold communicates to London. Wormold is also supposed to send encoded reports to London but since there is nothing to report, the messages are pure fiction out of his imagination. Wormold even sends the Secret Service plans of supposedly secret weapons, using parts of his vacuum cleaners as a source of inspiration.

In a tragicomic tone, Mr Greene shows an innocent man entangled in a web of deceit and crime because he wishes to secure his daughter's financial future. The author is also very critical with the way the people employed by the Secret Service in those days went about their duty. There are hilarious scenes about such amateur agents' naïveté and the way they used to misjudge both the character and the personality of those they recruited seems almost unbelievable. One of Graham Greene's best novels.

This book was written and published in 1958. Yet when you read it, its as fresh as any of today's novels. It is a brisk easy read. It starts in Havana with a humble vacuum cleaner salesman who gets recruited by a British agent to spy for England. The gentleman doesn't know what to do and makes up fictional agents and fictional military/ political developments in Cuba.

This dark humour slides in great style with Graham Greene using his own experience in having travelled in various nations and having worked as a spy for England himself.

The book's freshness is unique. So many novels from that period of time seem relics of past. But this evergreen everlasting classic is as relevant and funny and entertaining as any spy novel written recently.

Allow Graham Greene to take you through a joy ride in Havana's clubs, bars, dark places and bring you mystery where there is none.

The ending too is quite surprisingly agreeable and delightful.

Gleefully combining the raucous humor of absurdity with slyly subtle wordplay and caustic satire, Greene entertains on every level, skewering British intelligence-gathering services during the Cold War. Setting the novel in the flamboyant atmosphere of pre-revolutionary Havana, where virtually anything can be had at a price, Greene establishes his contrasts and ironies early, creating a hilarious set piece which satirizes both the British government's never-satisfied desire for secrets about foreign political movements and their belief that the most banal of activities constitute threats to national security.

Ex-patriot James Wormold is a mild-mannered, marginal businessman and vacuum cleaner salesman, whose spoiled teenage daughter sees herself as part of the equestrian and country club set. Approached by MI6 in a public restroom, Wormold finds himself unwillingly recruited to be "our man in Havana," a role which will reward him handsomely for information and allow him some much-needed financial breathing room. Encouraged to recruit other agents to provide more information (and earn even more money), he chooses names at random from the country club membership list and fabricates personas for them, featuring them in fictionalized little dramas which he churns out and forwards to his "handlers." Always careful to fulfill their expectations exactly, Wormold becomes a more and more important "spy," his stories become more creative, his "enemies" find him and his "agents" to be dangerous, and his friends and the real people whose names were used as fictional agents begin to turn up dead.

Skewering British intelligence for being such willing dupes of a vacuum cleaner salesman who never wanted to be an agent in the first place, Greene betrays both his familiarity with the inner workings of the intelligence service, of which he was once a member, and his rejection of Cold War politics. In a conclusion which will satisfy everyone who has ever become impatient with political maneuvering, Greene carries the absurdities of power to their limits, orchestrating a grand finale which shows British politicians at their most venal--and most ridiculous. Ascerbic in its humor and delightfully refreshing in its choice of "hero," this novel is Greene at his very best. Mary Whipple

Wormold is a middle-aged expatriot British vacuum cleaner store owner/salesman living in Havana with his only daughter, Milly, 16 or 17 year old archtyical good but bad Catholic school girl cum leathal "Lolita" cum Cher from the movie "Clueless"--her favorite passtime is spending her father's money, sometimes on credit to Wormold's dismay. Feeling a general ennui about life after Milly's mother (his wife) leaves him to run off with another man, Wormold's whole life is indulging Milly, drinking with an ex-Nazi (possibly) drinking buddy Dr. Hasselbacher, and collecting miniature bourbon and whisky bottles (he has 100s).
When Milly wants a horse, Wormold decides to accept a manna from heaven in the form of a lucrative "part-time" job setting up the Havana station for the British secret service. Or was it a contract with the devil? As the heedless Wormold invents sub-agents and technical "drawings" for the "enemy's" (though which enemy we don't even know) secret installations in Havana, and generally fakes out the fools at Headquarters in London, real people start dying. What is going on? Can inventions--people and state secrets--of the imagination, "as if writing a novel" really come to life?
Tightly written with Greene's usual cast of colorful characters both local and expatriot, like the would be suitor of Milly, a policeman reknowned in Havana for carrying a human-skin cigarette case, Captain Seguras, this book is short, dense, compact, and worthwhile reading. It's a comical/satirical look at the human condition as well one of Graham's favorite topics, international intrigue and the world of the "spy."

`Our Man in Havana' is the wonderful satirical novel from Graham Greene that follows Wormold as he is coerced into the secret service in Havana and how he starts to file false reports that start to come true. It has a deceptively simple writing style and yet it manages to be extremely evocative and conjures up that various scenes amazingly well. I laughed out loud many times throughout the book and the almost surreal satire is perfectly set against the backdrop of pre-revolutionary Cuba. I didn't know what to expect with this before I started, but I was very quickly immersed in the story and it became hard to put down. With stunning writing, hilarious storyline, immaculate dialogue and perfectly pitched between outright farce and serious drama this book offers plenty to delight most readers. Highly recommended indeed.

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When a glib British Secret Service recruiter gloms in on a hapless vacuum cleaner salesman trying to make a living and raise a precocious daughter in Havana, the result can only be one thing. Chaos. Daughter Milly flirts with a Hollywood-model Latino torturer and spends far more than daddy makes. Mom has split long ago with some American hotshot from Miami. The action all takes place during Cuba's notorious 1950s Batista regime when guerrillas lurked in the jungled mountains while casinos or whorehouses lured `players' from far and wide. Our man in Havana needs dough and he needs it bad. So what do you suppose a poor, unwilling spy does ? He invents agents (collects their salaries and expenses), hands in fictitious economic data, and even invents weird weapons programs rumored to be coming up in the jungles. London headquarters laps it up. His old German friend tries to warn him that he's getting in over his head. But our man draws designs of Weapon X based on vacuum cleaner parts. London sends him a secretary and radio operator. What an upgrade ! Now he's really up the creek ! The torturer wants to marry Milly. He's got to move fast. But things start falling apart. "The other side" believes that if London is supporting him so well, he must be sending them good stuff. They intercept his messages, decipher his code, and people start getting bumped off. Who is gonna be next ? We reach the climax. All is eventually understood in London, but not quite, old chap. Our vacuum cleaner selling spy is finally promoted out of harm's way. Cushy job at Home, various perks, and then there is the luscious Mrs. Severn. Hmm.

Somehow I missed the novel when it came out, I never saw the film, and now, so many years later, I've enjoyed a great page-turner. OK, maybe it aint great literature, but you will definitely like this one. Very light, very clever, and reminiscent of the way the world usually works. A classic thriller stood on its head, but still captivating. Ripper, Graham !

This is perhaps the most enjoyable Graham Greene novel I have yet read. Greene dubs it one of his "Entertainments" and it certainly IS entertaining. I am a huge Ian Fleming fan and Greene covers some of the same territory here: British spies in exotic locales. In fact, both Fleming and Greene worked for the British Secret Service around the same time. However, whereas Fleming is sympathetic to the Secret Service, Greene is more severe.

The story concerns a vacuum-cleaner salesman in Cuba named Wormold. One day, he meets a very eccentric man from MI6 who wants Wormold to be Britain's man in Havana. Wormold takes the job in order to get money for his daughter. However, he is not very adept at being a spy, so he starts making up the reports...which suddenly begin to come true.

Greene portrays the British Secret Service as a bunch of fools who are ready to believe whatever Wormold tells them. It is a typical Greene story in that it deals with the moral ambiguities of life and it has an extremely flawed hero. This is one of the best spy novels I've ever read.

This is a wickedly funny 'entertainment' by Greene. He describes Havana perfectly (then, as now), and his characters and antics are deeply developed in a short novel. Wormald the helpless vacuum cleaner salesman, his expensive daughter Millie, the mysterious war veteran Dr Hasselbacher, and the evil Captain Segura (with his cigarette case made from human skin) become embroiled in espionage that descends into farce. The dialogue, in typical Greene style is sparse and pitch perfect. There are also passages that brilliantly spoof the British intelligence services. A mighty comic novel.

Our Man in Havana takes place in the late fifties, during the Cold War. It tells the story of Wormold, an English, divorced vacuum cleaner salesman in Cuba.
Sales are not very good these days, and when his 17-year-old daughter's latest caprice turns out to be a horse, he knows he can't afford it. That's when he's accosted in the toilets of a local bar by Hawthorne, a cryptic man with an interesting offer: 300$ a month, to become a secret agent. All he has to do is recruit sub-agents and send regular reports to London.
Wormold uses the money to buy presents for his daughter, sending fake reports and sketches of an imaginary war machine from vacuum cleaner designs. Very pleased with his work, the MI6 decide to send him a secretary...
This was my first encounter with Graham Greene's work. I read this book as a background preparation for the Cambridge Proficiency exam, and even though it's not a genre I am used to (I usually read fantasy), I must say I enjoyed it thoroughly. The story is timeless and could as well have happened nowadays, it's funny and sarcastic, and the characters are extremely human. A great experience!

You really have to appreciate how Greene was able to anticipate the Cuban revolution of 1959 as opposed to the Revolution of 1895. The ideas of missiles and Russians was genius. It is factual that 'other' 'agents' have in many ways done the same thing without ever being 'caught' by the 'home' office of their respective countries. This book is short enough to create a good lesson plan at the high school level but students need to have their background information built up first. I reread this book from time to time so i can relive my own past...

Subtitled "An Entertainment," this terrific 1958 work surely is much more than that. Wormold, a failing vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana, is divorced and the father of Milly, his ravishing and very Catholic 17-year-old daughter. Desperate for money to satisfy Milly's extravagant expectations, Wormold is drawn into the shady world of British espionage. Completely perplexed as to what to do but needing to justify the money he's earning, Wormold begins to cite real people as his agents, invent covert activities, and write plots and counterplots in his reports back to the home office in London. The London office loves his work so much that they send him a secretary and an accountant to support his obviously important operation. Of course, London doesn't know who Wormold's reporting on; they could be the Americans, the Germans, the Russians, or the "rebels." All too soon, Wormold's fictions spin out of control and the line between invention and reality vanishes.

I was struck not only by the economy of Greene's effortless and crisp writing, his rich array of characters, the metaphors that worked so well, and Greene's hilarious satire and comedy, but also by the resonance this story has with today's world of secret agencies, events spinning out of control, and the absurdity of our blind faith-based leaders as they invent their own reality. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are a perfect fit in Greene's London home office. If Greene were with us today, he would have no shortage of material to write about, although he might be hard pressed to find jocularity among today's dangerous, thick-skinned philistines.

Graham Greene's OUR MAN IN HAVANA, written in 1958, may have been intended as a counterpoint to Ian Fleming's James Bond. James Wormold is a single father with a teenage daughter who sells vacuums in Havana and still pines for his ex. Strapped for money he agrees to work for British Intelligence, a position for which he has no experience, eventually setting up a field office complete with real and fictional spies. The law of unintended consequences kicks in when fictional reports and actual events coincide. The book shifts from an amusing satire to thriller, but doesn't lose the comedic overtones.

OUR MAN IN HAVANA will make you smile, is a fast read and has Greene's exceptional prose. Looking at the state of today's intelligence operations, in the US and abroad, things may not have changed appreciably; with Greene's depiction far closer to the truth than Fleming's.

Like a pleasant tropical breeze, "Our Man in Havana" ambles in. It's the kind of story that would seem easy to write until you actually sat down to write it. Only then would you realize just how difficult it is to marry genuine comedy with legitimate suspense in a quick couple hundred pages.

Jim Wormold is a vacuum clean salesman who's recruited as a British spy by the soi-disant paragon of British espionage Henry Hawthorne. I won't say what happens next, but you'd be right in assuming that in the always faithful comedic tradition of mistaken identity, someone has to keep spinning more elaborate tales in order to keep up the ruse. What really gives the book its kick is the sharp dialogue and effortless writing. At first, it appears Wormold's daughter Milly will provide the vital backbone of the book. Her precocious wit and dubious Catholic faith make for some interesting exchanges early on, but Greene steers his story away from this domestic turmoil and onto a grander stage. I didn't know if it would work, but two-thirds the way through, when I was turning pages without realizing it, I suddenly realized it had. I'd bought the idea that a vacuum cleaner salesman was in the process of fundamentally changing the world order.

"Our Man in Havana" is no "The Heart of the Matter" (Greene's "Legacy Book"), but like the tropical world it inhabits succeeds on almost every level it tries to, and that, more than a perpetually frowning pen, is the hallmark of every great writer.

This was the first Graham Greene novel for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This book is a satirical look at the world of spying--set in Cuba just prior to Castro. The main character is a vacuum cleaner salesman who is reluctantly recruited to become a spy for British intelligence. The problem is that he is not cut out for the job so he just makes up his own spies and his own intelligence. That is comical enough until you find out the British and the Cubans both buy into his made up stories. What happens later is almost reminiscent of Inspector Jacques Clousteau. The ending is especially amusing. Highly recommended.

Set in pre-revolutionary Cuba, Our Man in Havana is an intriguing and fun espionage story. Written in 1958 by English author Graham Greene, the novel criticizes secret services during the Cold War.

Vacuum cleaner vendor in Havana Mr. Wormold, gets contacted by an MI6 spy, Mr. Hawthrone, who convinces him to become an agent for the British intelligence. He agrees because business is not doing well, and because he wants to take his devout daughter Milly back to Britain in order to save her from local preying men. Especially from Captain Segura, a military torturer known as The Red Vulture. Wormold, a solitary man left by his wife, has no training as a spy and feels insecure about his operative skills. At his return to London, Mr. Hawthrone's boss is very pleased with his recruit; they agree he will need further assistance and decide to send a fully trained secretary to aid him. The mole has been introduced to the secret book code, and starts to send disturbing information gathered by his agents. There is one the secret service pays special attention to: big scale weaponry is being built in a forest area of Cuba near Santiago, where the communist rebels hide. The report has filtered and captured the special attention of several agencies, and now Wormold's life is at stake. Little knows London about the veracity of such information...

The strength of the story lies in the main character, Mr. Wormold. His sense of humour, the way he gathers information and how he ends up being a great chess player in the spying game, grips you from the start. The usual heroes of espionage thrillers, tough cold men that know the game well, are an object of ridicule as the story unfolds. Wormold, a vulnerable man that fears for the future of his daughter, is the unlikeliest agent a secret service could recruit. Yet his friendship with a possible sympathizer of the opposite side, his recklessness and wit in the weirdest occasions, and his vast imagination will help him when all hope is lost.

This is the funniest spy story one could read. The suffering of the character in the most risible situations, makes you laugh throughout the whole book. The absurdity of the information war that followed the end of WWII, the hypocrisy of pre-Castro Cuban society and the criticism towards orthodox Catholicism draw the perfect atmosphere for the story to develop.

If you've got Scotch miniatures at home, you are bound to be reminded of this book pretty often.This is one of Greene's lightest, but best novels.Brilliantly crafted characters and a fabulous storyline make this a joy to read. The unworldy air of the events and a grand climax grips the Greene fan and the uninitiated alike.The conflict present in Greene's characters is present here as well -Wormold,the vacuum-cleaner seller cum spy struggles to keep his life in check and conscience within bounds. Greene himself was an MI-6 agent.Is he trying to put across something about MI-6 or the secret services in general?Apparently Greene once acknowledged this fact. A must-read.

This text set out to ironize over English secret service, probably also other secret services. The story is well on the side of the unbelievable, but its charm compensate for its lack of realism. Its fantasy - a vacuum cleaner is made into a dangerous war machine by drawing a small man beside it - compensates for its lack of real spy story creativity.

The story is also a sort of distant, not quite believable, love story. However, the main characte, Mr. Wormold, does not quite believe it himself, and the girl, Beatrice, is the driver of the love story: «haven't you got a room where there is a bed? Beds always make one talk." (p. 103), so it is explainable.

Lastly, is it is a funny story of a young girl, Milly that grows up with our hero Mr. Wormold, she attends a catholic convent, and she has no mother around. At seventeen her environment is her schoolmates: "is that (true lov) the thing you are talking about at the convent? Naturally. It's the future, isn't it? We haven't got a past to talk about, though Sister Agnes has" (p.95) In contrast to the English Secret Service Mr. Wormold talks about reality "I mean your daughter is real and her seventeen birthdays is real" (p. 103)

Now, if we pretend that the English Secret service is the Englishnesnes, Mr Wormold is the contrasting reality and Milly is the future, the story is a deep metaphor for where the world is heading.

I am not sure this is a great, great book. It is fun. And it has become part of our book heritage. As far as I see, due to the vacuum cleaner drawings.

Quotations. "Dr. Brown, who had palmed off the unimportant Carter..." (p. 172). "It takes two to keep something real" (p. 103), «you can't love and be as confident as he was" (p. 103)

Graham Greene's novel about spies in pre-castro Cuba is funny, satirical and ultimately true about the ridiculousness of cold war paranoia. The tropical and laid back cuba where prostitutes, cigars and alcohol seem to be the only important products is suddently invaded by spies from the superpowers.

The protangonist of this story is the vacuum salesmen wormwood who due to the need for some extra cash for his 17 year old daughter decides to take on a job as a spy for his native UK. However, wormwood soon learns from his friend dr.hasslebacher that its much easier and effective to simply make things up to confirm the suspicions of his superiors than to actually go about finding real intelligence. The power of human ignorance, stupidity and tendency to believe what confirms our predispositions is fully realized when wormwood's spymasters become more and more convinced by his faked reports. The crazier and more inane wormwood's reports, the more that his superiors believe him.

This funny and innocent game soon turns deadly however when the spies of other nations are also misled into believing wormwood's reports are true and attempt to silence this source of "valuable intelligence." The signature phrase of the book is "are your sympathies with the east or west," a question often put to wormwood and the other hapless inhabitants of cuba whose daily lives could not be further from the power struggles of the superpowers.

In the end, the heavy momentum created by the fear and suspicion of the superpowers threatens to crush all that is caught in between. This novel makes us question who are the truly evil people in this world? The secret policemen of cuba end up as a rather sympathetic character who falls in love with wormwood's daughter and befriends wormwood where the gentlemen of the british spy service are arrogant men who sees wormwood as nothing but a pawn to be sacraficed and could not even admit that they had been fooled by a lowly vacuum salesmen.

For everyone who believes in the omniscience of the CIA or KBG or MI6 or whatever, read this book and remember the quote:

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Dear Readers

Truly one of my favorite novels. And of course what I like especially is his style of writing and style of thinking.

And of course he stresses that any good spy my first "check in" at the bar and order a Rum Punch.

I once knew a man that actually met Graham Greene. In Malaya about 1950. That puts it in the time period of the "secret war" that was going on between The British and the Chinese Communist led insurgents. Those were indeed interesting conversations. The British High Commissioner had apparently been murdered in a Communist ambush. Nasty stuff. Nasty kind of war.

Then Graham Greene came in and wanted a "run-down" on the facts. Well he didn't get them. But then who knows?

sjw

Spies should be shown the greatest respect for the work they do and all information sent by them are sacred and should not be doubted!

Even if the drawings of the Secret Weapon look like that of a household appliance.

'Our Man In Havana' is written with a straight "face". You would however be struggling to keep your face straight as you read the book. At a time when I'd just finish the Smiley trilogies and some other spy novels by John le Carre, 'Our Man In Havana' made the spy game seem highly ludicrous and easy. Completely unlike the cold, lonely, intellectually-draining world of George Smiley. However, the book is not without its dark elements, which exist in the form of an influential Captain who so happens to carry a human skin cigarette case.

A light-hearted satirical comedy, 'Our Man in Havana' is delightful in prose and easy to read. The reader grows to like the doting father but George Smiley, he sure isn't. George Costanza, he just could be.

Graham Greene is without a doubt my favorite author and this is my favorite work by a man who should be revered as one of the literary greats of the modern world. I love this book because I find it hysterical, but not shallow. Greene is witty, clever and poignent, a combination which seems to elude most other authors of his time. I reread Our Man in Havana every few months and, amazingly, it gets better every time.

I this book is confirmation that I (generally) don’t like thing written in the 50’s and 60’s. The language and the style just seem to be too aloof for me. The story doesn’t get going until about half way through by which time I was annoyed. The characters are stagnate and the plot uninteresting which added to my overall dislike of this book.

I this book is confirmation that I (generally) don’t like thing written in the 50’s and 60’s. The language and the style just seem to be too aloof for me. The story doesn’t get going until about half way through by which time I was annoyed. The characters are stagnate and the plot uninteresting which added to my overall dislike of this book.

The reader follows a simple vacuum cleaner salesman that is living in Cuba, all set before Castro becomes leader. Jim Wormold is recruited by the British government to keep an eye on goings on in Cuba. However instead of reporting fact he reports fiction, making it all up as he goes along. Watch his antics as his world turns back to front and upside down while he tries to maintain the lie he has created.

A great substitue to Graham Greene's serious spy stories that will have you laughing out loud for years to come.

Fantastic book with one of the most refreshing and hilarious romances in literature. After watching two seasons of Homeland, I was in dire need of a fun poke at the world of espionage, and this did the trick. I'm on a mission to read every one of Graham Greene's "entertainments." They have yet to disappoint.

Funny, but manages to be poignant at the same time

Cuba pre-castro seems like a wonderful place that I wish I could have experienced. If the book was not well written (which it IS) it would deserve praise just for its amazing description of a forgotten time and place

I do not quite agree with Christopher Hichens' introduction, but he can't make the atmosphere of the bokk any smaller, it is a wonderful, emotional and exiting book - as good as I rembered it from about 20 years ago! Graham Green is simply an excellent story teller!

It is already my fourth book of Graham Green, and without any doubt the best one. It is a combination of humor and suspense as I have never seen in other books. It is also a way of laughing about the Cold-War and the sometimes absurd behaviour of spies, secrets and Government's Intelligent Services. Really I recommend it.