Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene

Our Man In Havana tells the story of an ageing vacuum cleaner dealer struggling to provide for himself and his daughter. His daughter is growing up fast and begins wanting things that he can't possibly pay for on his salary. So when a spy approaches him in the bathroom and offers him more money on the side to work as an agent he can hardly refuse... Graham Greene really is one of the most fantastic authors that this country has ever produced, and this country has surely produced some incredible ones. What I find brilliant about his work is that it appears timeless. Despite being written over 50 years ago to my eye it could have been written last year, the ...  Read the complete review

Havana in the late-1950s is a city to visit not to live in, though not many tourists come now that the President's regime is nearing its end. But Wormold, an ineffectual, beliefless vacuum cleaner salesman whose valued personal possessions would fit into a single crate, has problems unrelated to politics. His wife left on the morning plane to Miami more than a decade ago, his 16-year-old daughter spends more money than he can earn, and his company have sent him a new model called the Atomic Pile Cleaner at a time of uncertain power supply and heightened nuclear paranoia. Wormold is full of sad caution, the archetypal rootless urban man set adrift on the ...  Read the complete review

"G.R.A.H.A.M. G.R.E.E.N.E" The young assistant in my local library shook her head as she gazed into her computer. "Can you spell that again for me? No. There isn't a Graham Greene." I gently explained that he was a well-known author with practically a shelf to himself, but that they had changed the books around during the past week. I suggested she look under the title, Our Man in Havana. "How do you spell Havana?" I popped into the corner where the public computer was and found it on the list before returning to the counter. It was the usual busy saturday afternoon and I rejoined the queue behind several children each holding ...  Read the complete review