book data
2,173 ratings,
3.86
average rating, 193 reviews
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published
April 13th 2009
by CSA WORD
(first published 1958)
details
Audio CD
isbn
1906147426
(isbn13: 9781906147426)
description
In a legendary novel that appears to predict the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Graham Greene introduces James Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman whose…more
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avg 3.86
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
Admittedly, I hadn't finished the book yet at the time I wrote the below -- I was about halfway through -- but since I've seen the movie, I feel confident enough to extrapolate. Barring, of course, one of those Sense and Sensibility "Willoughby's back -- and he's DRUNK?!" surprises. Somehow I don't think ol' Graham is the type.
And it's a crying shame I'll probably never get to see the movie again. It was a particularly good one, and now that I've found the book is particula...more
And it's a crying shame I'll probably never get to see the movie again. It was a particularly good one, and now that I've found the book is particula...more
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Read in August, 2008
Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana is a delightful farce that manages to be serious and laugh out loud funny at the same time. It follows the unfortunate Wormold, a British vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana whose shortage of funds finds him willing to accept an offer to join the British Intelligence Service. As a generally inept and careless person, he can do any actual spying, so he ends up sending fake reports back to London so that he can use his expense fund to pay for his daughter's many exp...more
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Read in January, 2008
Given the supposed military intelligence that led to the war in Iraq, it's tempting to look to books such as "Our Man in Havana," Graham Greene's comic spy novel about the Cold War, for parallels to our current situation. (In the book, drawings of pieces of a household vacuum cleaner are passed off as schematics for sophisticated weaponry.) Rather than there being any direct correlation, however, it brings more to mind that quote sometimes attributed to Mark Twain about how history may...more
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Jim Wormold est un paisible vendeur d'aspirateurs de La Havane, en cette période de Guerre froide et de début de la révolution castriste.
Et Wormold a un problème : sa fille, Milly, qu'il adore, est à la fois catholique et extrêmement dépensière au regard des modestes revenus de son père.
Aussi quand on propose à Wormold de devenir agent des Services secrets britanniques, il y voit surtout l'opportunité de revenus rapides.
Et comme l'espionnage ne l...more
Et Wormold a un problème : sa fille, Milly, qu'il adore, est à la fois catholique et extrêmement dépensière au regard des modestes revenus de son père.
Aussi quand on propose à Wormold de devenir agent des Services secrets britanniques, il y voit surtout l'opportunité de revenus rapides.
Et comme l'espionnage ne l...more
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Read in April, 2009
Acquired this for free at some time or another. Picked it up after judging it by its cover. Very hip 1960 edition with goofy illustration and shady looking spy-type on the cover. I was expecting a great read, and that's what I got! The binding was about to fall apart, but it held up for a 3 day binge read in which I couldn't put it down. It doesn't read so much like a novel as it does a play. Lots of quick, smart dialogue and a fast-paced plot. Feels considerably different than the short ...more
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Owns a copy
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Read in February, 2010
This farce holds the same canny and clever delight as the Pink Panther, Dr. Strangelove and The Comedy of Errors, with dialogue and pacing to which David Mamet is clearly indebted. I could almost see the smoke from Graham Greene's typewriter keys swirling in the air as he tore through sheets of erasable bond, churning out this crazy, wonderful and utterly a propos satire of spies.
It's the mid 1950's when we meet our man, Jim Wormold, a milquetoast British expatriate who moved to Hava...more
It's the mid 1950's when we meet our man, Jim Wormold, a milquetoast British expatriate who moved to Hava...more
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Read in October, 2006
This Graham Greene classic tells the story of Jim Wormold, who sells vacuum cleaners in pre-Castro Havana. He's a simple man, struggling to support a materialistic teenage daughter on his own. When the British Secret Service approaches him about being their "man in Havana", he can't turn down the extra cash. But he's also incapable of doing what they ask. Jim muddles through being a spy the best way he can, but one lie leads to another and suddenly his whole world is endangered.
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Read in October, 2009
In this comedic espionage story, Mr. Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana, is inexplicably hired by MI6 to keep tabs on events in Cuba. Batista is still in charge of the island, but communist rebels are rumored to be in the mountains. Upon the advice of a friend, Wormold makes up phantom agents, and pockets the money the government sends him to pay the fictional agents. However, when his made up reports get into the wrong hands, people who resemble his phantom agents, along with Wormo...more
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Read in September, 2009
So alarmingly funny. Why do we enjoy the rise, fall and redemption of the piddling spirit of Mr. Wormold? Because it's precisely that sort of sloshing simpleness we want to be the most indomitable of all types of man, because those persons are vulnerable to only one sort of greatness: love.
'You should dream more, Mr. Wormold. Reality in our century is not something to be faced.' [10:]
'You can't love and be as confident as he was. If you love you are afraid of losing ...more
'You should dream more, Mr. Wormold. Reality in our century is not something to be faced.' [10:]
'You can't love and be as confident as he was. If you love you are afraid of losing ...more
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Read in May, 2009
A fun read from a wonderful novelist. This is easily the funniest of Greene's books that I've read, the plot reading like something out of a middle-aged man's fantastical nightmares: the British government recruits a Havana vacuum salesman to spy for them, even though he knows nothing about espionage. Greene uses this fun idea for a plot not only to mine a few laughs, but to level the boom at Cold War governments pursuing every shred of mysterious information with reckless abandon--no matter the...more
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Read in May, 2009
Good read. Sort of a police/detective/spy novel. Greene pokes fun at the world of spies and at the genre of detective/spy writing.
Wormold, a British vacuum cleaner salesman in the Havana of the 1950s, somehow gets tangled up with the British secret service as a spy. Instead of performing his job as a spy, he decides to make up his own stories which he then transmits to the secret service. The British decide he needs reinforcement because they suspect something big is about to happen in Cu...more
Wormold, a British vacuum cleaner salesman in the Havana of the 1950s, somehow gets tangled up with the British secret service as a spy. Instead of performing his job as a spy, he decides to make up his own stories which he then transmits to the secret service. The British decide he needs reinforcement because they suspect something big is about to happen in Cu...more
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Read in February, 2010
I've been trying to read a chunk of Graham Greene over the last year, and this is the third novel I've finished in that span. Like Travels with My Aunt, Our Man in Havana is one of what Greene called his 'entertainments', as opposed to a literary novel. And it is certainly entertaining! In the introduction to the Vintage Classic version that I read, Christopher Hitchens explains that this novel came out before any of Ian Fleming's Bond stories. Greene's protagonist is a spy who – unlike Bond ...more
Read in April, 2009
graham greene is my favorite "second tier" author. that means he's up there with faulkner, but it'd be heresey to put him in such a high place. this is not one of the exemplary pieces of writing that he's produced though. this is clearly a money-making espionage novel. it is labeled "an entertainment" for a reason. The Power and the Glory, Brighton Rock, and The Heart of the Matter are all highly acclaimed and HIGHLY recommended. The Ministry of Fear is sooooooooooooooo...more
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Read in November, 2009
"Our Man in Havana" by Graham Greene is about a vacuum cleaner salesman in Cuba (Wormold) who has a beautiful daughter (Milly) and is approached by a spy (Hawthorne) to do some work for the British. Wormold takes the charge and the money and in doing so, makes up Top Secret information. This is amplified when the Brits send him a secretary and coder to help with all the info coming out of Havana.
I liked it overall. The beginning was great, the middle lagged a little, but th...more
I liked it overall. The beginning was great, the middle lagged a little, but th...more
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Read in March, 2009
This book is a bit less introspective than "Brighton Rock," but the plot is no less suspenseful or intriguing. It concerns Wormold, an English ex-pat in Havana who takes on the mantle of secret agent as a way to supplement his meagre income as vacuum cleaner salesman. He is content to falsify entire reports for a while; after all, who will come to check on him all the way in the Caribbean? Greene's prose is as usual infested with simile and there are some interesting plot devices (I es...more
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This is a pretty great send up of spy thrillers, seemingly the inspiration for such awesomeness as North By Northwest and The Man Who Knew Too Little. MI6 recruits a vacuum cleaner salesman to be their agent in Havana, and he accepts to pay for his daughter's horse. But he doesn't know any intelligence or even where to start, so he just makes up agents and secrets to send in his reports. Then shit hits the fan when one of his made up agents turns out to be real. What makes this book so great is ...more
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Owns a copy
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Read in July, 2009
This story must have been the inspiration for LeCarre's The Tailor of Panama. The main character, Wormold, is a bit of a shlub in pre-Castro 1958 Cuba, an expatriate English vacuum-cleaner salesman in Havana with a spoiled teenage daughter and a failing business (his company's new vacuum model is the Atomic Pile). He's somehow recruited by MI6. It's a farce (or "entertainment," as Greene would call it), but as the story unfolds, Wormold starts to redeem himself in unexpected ways. It's...more
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Oh, a very enjoyable, very amusing read by "The Master of the Macabre." No, wait, that's Edgar Allan Poe. Or Hitchcock. Or someone. Anyway, Graham Greene is a talented novelist, and this slight book--which he termed one of his "entertainments" is richly diverting. There are some laugh-out-loud moments here, but for the most part Greene mixes the absurdity of the plot with a genteel wittiness, to good effect--it's the sort of thing that Evelyn Waugh might have produced if...more
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Read in November, 2009
A rather ordinary man with a sense of decency barely scraping a living as a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana in the 1950s, in a rare reckless moment grasps the opportunity to improve his circumstances by becoming a spy. He muddles through a series of dangerous, but at the same time hilarious, experiences to achieve a happy ending of sorts. This is a perfectly realised book, both as a comic novel and as a spy story. Engaging characters compassionately portrayed, brilliant plot, great atmosphe...more
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It took me a month to read Greene’s “entertainment” about Havana on the eve of revolution. It took me a month not because I didn’t like it, but because I was busy. It was little bit like watching an interesting television program one minute at a time, if that program were made by a known communist sympathizer and a steadfast Castro supporter.
My favorite character is Captain Segura, a wicked member of the establishment’s police force, who carries a wallet made of human skin...more
My favorite character is Captain Segura, a wicked member of the establishment’s police force, who carries a wallet made of human skin...more
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