When I visited the Havana I was fascinated to find a city that lives up to its nostalgic reputation but demands to be engaged with in the present. With eerie prescience, Greene's satirical tale had foretold the Cold War's most perilous episode, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.Įxploiting a wealth of archival material and interviews with key protagonists, Our Man Down in Havana delves into the story behind and beyond the author's prophetic Cuban tale, focusing on one slice of Greene's manic life: a single novel and its complex history.‘Our Man in Havana’, Graham Greene’s classic “entertainment” poking fun at the British secret service abroad was published just before the Revolution changed Cuba forever. His Cuban novel describes an amateur agent who dupes his intelligence chiefs with invented reports about 'concrete platforms and unidentifiable pieces of giant machinery'.

This includes his many visits to a pleasure island that became a revolutionary island, turning his chance involvement into a political commitment. Twelve weeks after its publication, the Cuban Revolution triumphed in January 1959, soon transforming a capitalist playground into a communist stronghold.Ĭombining biography, history and politics, Our Man Down in Havana investigates the real story behind Greene's fictional one. Three years later, he returned in the midst of Fidel Castro's guerrilla insurgency against a U.S.-backed dictator to begin writing his iconic novel Our Man in Havana. The former MI6 officer had stumbled upon the ideal setting for a comic espionage story.

immigration authorities deported Graham Greene from Puerto Rico in 1954, the British author made an unplanned visit to Havana and discovered that 'every vice was permissible and every trade possible' in a Caribbean fleshpot of mafia-run casinos and nude revues. 'a delicious companion to the tale Greene confected from the incompetence of spooks and an island in turmoil' - The EconomistĮxploring the backstory that led to the writing of Graham Greene's beloved satirical spy novel, Our Man Down in Havana evokes this pivotal time and place in the author's life.

Our man down in havana