Our Man in Havana

Description

MI6's man in Havana is Wormold, a former vacuum-cleaner salesman turned reluctant secret agent out of economic necessity. To keep his job, he files bogus reports based on Charles Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare and dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs. Then his stories start coming disturbingly true... First published in 1959 against the backdrop of the Cold War, Our Man in Havana remains one of Graham Greene's most widely read novels. It is an espionage thriller, a penetrating character study, and a political satire of government intelligence that still resonates today. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction by Christopher Hitchens. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Graham Greene (1904-1991), whose long life nearly spanned the length of the twentieth century, was one of its greatest novelists. Educated atBerkhamstedSchoolandBalliolCollege,Oxford, he started his career as a sub-editor of theLondonTimes.He began to attract notice as a novelist with his fourth book,Orient Express,in 1932. In 1935, he trekked across northernLiberia, his first experience inAfrica, told inA Journey Without Maps(1936). He converted to Catholicism in 1926, an edifying decision, and reported on religious persecution inMexicoin 1938 inThe Lawless Roads,which served as a background for his famousThe Power and the Glory, one of several "Catholic" novels (BrightonRock,The Heart of the Matter,The End of the Affair).During the war he worked for the British secret service in Sierra Leone; afterward, he began wide-ranging travels as a journalist, which were reflected in novels such asThe Quiet American,Our Man in Havana,The Comedians,Travels with My Aunt,The Honorary Consul,The Human Factor,Monsignor Quixote,andThe Captain and the Enemy.As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, two books of autobiography,A Sort of LifeandWays of Escape, two biographies, and four books for children. He also contributed hundreds of essays and film and book reviews toThe Spectatorand other journals, many of which appear in the late collectionReflections.Most of his novels have been filmed, includingThe Third Man, which the author first wrote as a film treatment. Graham Greene was named Companion of Honour and received the Order of Merit among numerous other awards. Christopher Hitchens is a widely published polemicist and frequent radio and TV commentator. He is the author of many books, including Why Orwell Matters, Letters to a Young Contrarian, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, as well as books on Cyprus, Kurdistan and Palestine, including Blaming the Victims coedited with Edward Said. He is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and writes for, among others, Slate, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Book Review, and The Washington Post. He lives with his family in Washington, D.C.

The ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century manAEs consciousness and anxiety. (William Golding) As comical, satirical, atmospherical an AEentertainmentAE as he has given us. (The Daily Telegraph, London)