Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana

LynnDianne Beene (University of New Mexico)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1958

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

British novelist Graham Greene (1904-1991) created a group of thrillers, works he termed “entertainments”, many of which were as deliberative as his serious Catholic novels. The most sardonic of Greene’s entertainments is Our Man in Havana (1958), a black comedy set in pre-Castro Cuba. Greene based this novel, and others such as The Third Man (1949) and The Human Factor (1978), largely on his experience in the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6, the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom. Recruited into MI6 in 1941, Greene worked for—and developed a special relationship with—the notorious double agent Harold “Kim” Philby who defected …

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4147 words

Citation: Beene, LynnDianne. "Our Man in Havana". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 31 January 2022 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13310, accessed 24 November 2024.]

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