The Comedians book by Graham Greene A Novel That Matters Published by Thriftbooks.com User, 11 years ago Graham Greene did not feel this was his favorite work, and according to Paul Theroux, it's not his best. [Read Theroux's introduction, which should have been called the Afterword, AFTER reading the book.] Yet this novel captures a historic time and the fate of a "failed state" under the spell of a mad dictator, Papa Doc Duvalier, whose obsessions with Voodoo and power engender perpetual terror and ruin, enforced by his personal goon squad, the sunglass-clad Toutons Macoute. Greene brilliantly divides the world into "comedians" and those who actually do something. We meet a rich mix of both, beginning with Brown, Smith, and Jones, the comics, on a Dutch ship with a Greek name, the Medea, in Greek mythology an enchantress who repeatedly resorted to murder to gain her ends, like Papa Doc and others in this enchanting book. Greene weaves a tight narrative, for the most part, where dialog comes at you in staccato fashion, revealing the soft spots, lies, and bluffs of each speaker.

Brown, Greene's persona, narrates the book and shows himself to be a brooding egotist dwelling on his lost father and falsely promising youth at the Jesuit College of the Visitation at Monte Carlo, where his mother had abandoned him. He's the jealous, possessive sort, a lapsed Catholic who has replaced his faith with unattainable romance. His lover, Martha, the wife of a South American diplomat, is always in his thoughts, even though he attempts to keep her out. He dwells on her every word. Greene gives their secret affair a real feel of desperation and passion, mixed with distrust and futility. We also meet Mr. and Mrs. Smith, naive American do gooders who absurdly want to open a vegetarian center in the midst of Haiti's nightmarish capital. Then there's Jones, a grifter who is the victim of his own comic farce. The "doers" are Dr. Magiot, a closet communist who sincerely tries to save lives in the name of humanity, and Philipot, who starts off as a poet and ends up in the mountains with a ragged band of rebels trying to overthrow the beast.

Greene also shows us in a sweeping gesture the disastrous policy of the US in Latin America, as President Johnson, in an attempt to keep communism out of the region, backed the lunatic Duvalier with troops, to the utter dismay of his victims. Greene was long onto America's mischief and meddling here and elsewhere, to the point where the FBI, for 40 years, had monitored his statements and his movements, according to Theroux. In this sense, this novel is relevant to today's naive global comic and tragic American policies of ridiculously attempting to "democratize" the world, while moving American corporations into these so-called liberated nations. Greene would have very much howled about Bush's "faith-based" missteps across the globe, and he would have found plenty of failed states and shady comic and tragic characters to write about. Above all, here is a novel that "counts." Because it exists, Duvalier's Haiti is preserved in its h Engaging drama set in Papa Doc's Haiti Published by Thriftbooks.com User, 14 years ago The novel opens on a cruise ship steaming toward Haiti.

We meet a diverse group of characters who are revealed through the device of setting them in a game of cards on board ship.Brown, the primary character and narrator is returning to Haiti to reclaim a hotel he inherited and through his eyes we see the political changes occurring in the country and are made aware of the ominous threat of the Tonton Macoute secret police that hangs over the entire story adding dramatic tension.Jones , his fellow passenger is revealed to be a con-man who gets by on his ability to make others laugh (one of the comedians) . Smith a failed presidential candidate from the US is naively seeking to establish a vegetarian center in Haiti seemingly oblivious to the turmoil all around him.Brown's romance with the wife of a diplomat provides a subplot that mirrors the theme that everyone is deceiving someone. The comedians all prove to be actors playing on a stage filled with political violence and the everpresent threat of more to come.This was a very engaging novel and if not Greene's most well known book it may be one of his best. I enjoyed it and highly recommend it for it's memorable characters and stunning evocation of a country approaching chaos.

High drama and human comedy in Haiti Published by Thriftbooks.com User, 14 years ago Graham Greene's forte lay in writing novels (and "entertainments") of political intrigue. I do not know if this master British novelist visited any or all of the countries about which he wrote. Mr. Greene seemed to have considerable knowledge of both the current and near recent political and societal conditions of the countries that formed the backdrop of his books. For example, in _The Comedians_ Mr. Greene shows an unusual grasp of the extreme poverty and deprivation suffered by Haitian people living under Papa Doc Duvalier's corrupt, dictatorial, and totalitarian regime as well as the extreme human rights violations and abuses of Papa Doc's sadistic secret police, the Tontons Macoute. Several characters in the book note with some irony vis-a-vis American foreign policy, that as bad as Papa Doc seems, he is at least a strong anti-Communist.Graham Greene does something very unusual with his major caucasian characters: he gives them very common, non-descript surnames. The reader never learns their first names. The narrator of the novel, an Englishman, is merely called "Mr.

Brown." He runs a financially deteriorating hotel in Haiti that he inherits from his mother. Like the author, Mr. Brown is a fallen-away Catholic. A British soldier of fortune and con artist who comes to Haiti is simply called Major Jones or just "Mr. Jones." His talents consist mainly in charming women and in telling funny jokes. An American couple, named Mr. and Mrs. Smith, come to Haiti hopefully to set up a vegetarian center. Mr. Smith ran in the 1948 U.S. presidential election on the Vegetarian Line. He is derisively referred to as "the Presidential Candidate" throughout the novel and utilizes this sobriquet as a method of influencing the Duvalier government to approve of his scheme. Graham Greene refers to all of these individuals as "comedians" because they symbolically wear actors' masks to hide their true natures and to invent persona to deceive people. Alternately, Marcel, Mr. Brown's late mother's black lover who avers that he would have died for her "...was no comedian after all. Death is a proof of sincerity."Greene chooses to present these "comedians" as realistic, flawed human beings.

They live on the fringes of life, never participating in the human adventure. But even comedians often have untapped hidden strengths that may be revealed in a crisis. Jones, the Smiths, and Brown eventually prove to be more heroic than they appear on the surface._The Comedians_ is one of the very best and one of the most heroic novels in Graham Greene's repertoire, and is most highly recommended. Vintage Graham Greene Published by Thriftbooks.com User, 16 years ago For those of us who have spent a lifetime reading the works of Graham Greene (which we can do because he spent an even longer lifetime producing brilliant work), of this we are certain: Graham Greene is the greatest writer in the English language maybe of the entire Twentieth Century. His body of work is staggering, and "The Comedians" is right up there with the best of them. Expertly weaving the dread and menace of Haiti under Papa Doc with the intimate, personal lives of a classic collection of displaced European and American characters, Greene does what he always does: he makes the personal political, and vice versa. "The Comedians" is sublime.

A Good Place and strange laughter Published by Thriftbooks.com User, 17 years ago To call a novel about the most horribly repressive and violent period in Hatian history The Comedians is typical Graham Greene irony. The main characters, Jones (a Brit expatriate on the run from a never disclosed shady past), Smith (a vegetarian crusader who was once a splinter candidate for U.S. president), and Brown (a man of no real country who has inherited a run down hotel in Haiti from his absent mother) are all rootless failures playing at life who are brought together in Haiti during a time of terror and political chaos when the country was descending into a kind of primitive madness. Against their will and in ways they don't anticipate, they are each sucked into the vortex. How they respond highlights the questions that Greene is forever posing about faith, redemption, commitment and responsibility.The dreams of each character, flimsy as they are, are doomed to fail in a land where utilities and civil order have broken down, where beggers predominate and order is maintained by the Tontons Macoute, the zombie figures in dark glasses who dispense Papa Doc's brutal 'justice' and leave the evidence of it lying beside the road.

Smith, who with his wife, wants to start a vegetarian center in the Haitian capitol, flees the country when he realizes that he must resort to bribes for the simplest permissions and even then the promises are a sham. Jones, who tries to con the Hatian government into buying arms that he doesn't possess, is uncovered as a fraud and flees to a South American embassy for protection (the British don't want him - or want him too much). Brown, who wants only to be left alone to run his hotel and pursue a pointless affair, nevertheless finds himself acting time and again to help one or another of the other characters (including a number of Haitians), all the while trying to remain emotionally neutral and uninvolved. He fails, and his failure brings on the book's one clear success, a good end for Jones who escapes the embassy, with Brown's assistance, to join and train a small band of Haitian guerrillas in the hills. At the end, having found 'a good place', he dies a comic but heroic death. He did not, it seems, actually know anything about warfare, having served in the army only in the entertainment division. His lies finally catching up.

But as one of the Haitian survivors says - he was good for the men - he made them laugh. Edition Details The Comedians: Amazon.co.uk: Graham Greene: 9780099478379: Books The Comedians Add all three to Basket Buy the selected items together This item:The Comedians by Graham Greene Paperback Â£9.28 In stock. Sent from and sold by Amazon. FREE Delivery on orders over Â£10. Details Our Man in Havana (Vintage Classics) by Graham Greene Paperback Â£8.99 In stock. Sent from and sold by Amazon. FREE Delivery on orders over Â£10. Details The Quiet American by Graham Greene Paperback Â£8.83 In stock. Sent from and sold by Amazon. FREE Delivery on orders over Â£10. Details Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1 This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App.

Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Apple To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. or Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here , or download a FREE Kindle Reading App . Product details Publisher: Vintage Classics; Centenary Ed edition (7 Oct. 2004) Language: English Product Dimensions: 13 x 2.1 x 19.7 cm Average Customer Review: "The ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man’s consciousness and anxiety." (William Golding) Book Description A striking depiction of Haiti on the brink of chaos, delivered with Greene’s characteristic dark humour, forceful story-telling, and very obvious human sympathy. By David on 26 Mar. 2006 Format: Paperback I first read "The Comedians" around thirty years ago and then again around twenty years ago. Remembering how much I enjoyed and admired the novel I have just finished re-reading it and have now sadly closed the book. It is an extremely satisfying novel written by one of the finest novelists of the 20th century. The three main characters are the men, Brown, Smith (with the feisty Mrs.

Smith) and Jones who meet as strangers on board the cargo-ship "Medea" bound from New York to Haiti where their paths cross and re-cross. Brown, the main character, is a rootless hotelier with a shady past and without faith or hope. Smith is a one-time American Presidential Candidate on an evangelic crusade to establish a vegetarian centre. Jones is a mystery at first, a liar certainly, a con man perhaps, who falls in and out with the regime but eventually finds some redemption. Set in the era of Papa Doc Duvalier's misrule with his sinister Tonton Macoute secret police the novel captures the atmosphere of a nation failed by it's corrupt leaders with a people living in fear and oppression. But this story is not about Haiti, it is about failed romance, disillusionment, cynicism but with some hope and redemption (but not for all). The introduction by Paul Theroux is a spoiler - he unravels and lays bare the plot and it is his opinion that this is "not one of Greenes best" and a "tepid novel" - whatever that means. I strongly advise readers to read Theroux's introduction AFTER the book and make their own minds up.

I believe this to be one of Greenes finest novels that even thirty years on from our first meeting was immensely pleasurable to read and one I highly recommend. The Comedians | novel by Greene | Britannica.com novel by Greene Pride and Prejudice The Comedians, novel concerning the need for courage in the face of evil by Graham Greene , published in 1966. The story is set in Haiti in the mid-1960s, during the regime of the brutal dictator François Duvalier . It is narrated by Brown, a ne’er-do-well who has inherited a failing hotel near the capital, Port-au-Prince ; he is returning after an abortive attempt to flee a doomed love affair. The Comedians is principally a novel of character. Each of the leading characters reveals a new facet of personality: a naive fool who was once a Vegetarian Party candidate for U.S. president proves to be compassionate and courageous; a lying, cowardly gunrunner dies a hero; and a former Freedom Rider transcends her simple liberalism to save Brown’s life when she confronts a brutal member of the secret police.

Learn More in these related articles: Port-au-Prince capital, chief port, and commercial centre of the West Indian republic of Haiti. It is situated on a magnificent bay at the apex of the Gulf of Gonâve (Gonaïves), which is protected from the open sea by the island of La Gonâve. The city was laid out in a grid pattern in 1749 by... 1 Reference found in Britannica Articles Assorted Reference discussed in biography (in Graham Greene ) Article History Corrections? Updates? Help us improve this article! Contact our editors with your feedback. MEDIA FOR: You have successfully emailed this. Error when sending the email. Try again later. Edit Mode Submit Tips For Editing We welcome suggested improvements to any of our articles. You can make it easier for us to review and, hopefully, publish your contribution by keeping a few points in mind. Encyclopædia Britannica articles are written in a neutral objective tone for a general audience. You may find it helpful to search within the site to see how similar or related subjects are covered. Any text you add should be original, not copied from other sources.

At the bottom of the article, feel free to list any sources that support your changes, so that we can fully understand their context. (Internet URLs are the best.) Your contribution may be further edited by our staff, and its publication is subject to our final approval. Unfortunately, our editorial approach may not be able to accommodate all contributions. Submit Thank You for Your Contribution! Our editors will review what you've submitted, and if it meets our criteria, we'll add it to the article. Please note that our editors may make some formatting changes or correct spelling or grammatical errors, and may also contact you if any clarifications are needed. Uh Oh There was a problem with your submission. Please try again later. Close Date Published: March 25, 2011 URL: Access Date: January 07, 2017 Share Greene in Haiti | America Magazine Feb 6 1993 - 12:00am | Paul Farmer From February 6, 1993 Graham Greene's The Comedians is surely the most famous novel set in contemporary Haiti.

The book, published in 1965, introduced the English-speaking world to the methods of governance of président-a-vie Francois Duvalier. Following the novel's publication, both Greene and his book were banned in Haiti. Papa Doc was furious with the expose, certainly, but he was also vexed by the ethnographic detail of the novel. Trained as an anthropologist, the dictator knew that careful observers like Greene are always more difficult to discredit. Duvalier did his best, however, going so far as to produce a glossy bilingual pamphlet, Graham Greene Demasque, which depicted the writer as "unbalanced, sadistic, perverted ... the shame of proud and noble England." Although Greene would later term this assessment "the greatest honor I've yet received," Duvalier was not joking. The Comedians, travelers to Haiti were warned, was a book that even the luggage-rifling thugs at the airport could recognize. Papa Doc probably had the last laugh. He kept his promise to go "from palace to cemetery," and son Jean-Claude subsequently spent a full 15 years in the Big House.

But Abraham, as the Bible-citing Haitians often say, finally cried "Enough!" Widespread revolt overtook the land late in 1985, after police shot and bayonetted three schoolboys in a scene even Greene would have had trouble depicting. Baby Doc fled to France in February 1986, settling ironically close to Greene's home in Antibes. A few months after the fat and kleptomaniacal dictator was overthrown, the celluloid version of Greene's novel came to town. Working in a clinic in central Haiti, I resolved to travel to Port-au-Prince and see the film on the day it opened. I say day because there was, at the time, a curfew--I don't recall whether or not the curfew was declared, but the fact remained that bullets were whizzing around town, most of them fired by soldiers at civilians. And so it was no surprise but something of a disappointment to find the theater almost empty. A disappointment because Haitian audiences tend to make raucous commentary on whatever film is playing, but the only comment on that day was the sharp and distracting report of gunfire outside the theater. I had long admired one of the book's characters. Dr.

Magiot is the Haitian doctor who serves as a foil to the superficial and uncommitted blancs--the Creole term for foreigners--in The Comedians. Magiot is a committed Communist, which allows him to maintain a deep faith, if not in God, then at least in humanity. Watching the Hollywood version, which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, I thought that the good doctor had faded into the background; even his philosophy had been somewhat diluted. As usual, the book was better than the movie. That night, I reread the novel (hidden carefully since 1983, when I snuck it into the country in a manila envelope). Perhaps Magiot had not been as central a character as I had recalled, but again I enjoyed the superb economy of his remarks. With great dignity and few words, Dr. Magiot explained his country to the book's narrator, an Englishman who came to Haiti to take over his mother's hotel just prior to Papa Doc's ascent. For example, standing over the body of a messy suicide, a government minister who has apparently slit his own throat out of fear, Dr. Magiot observes: "Violent deaths are natural deaths here.

He died of his environment." The book's most stirring passage, to my second reading, is to be found in a letter written by the doctor shortly before he was dispatched by Duvalier's henchmen. The letter was addressed to Brown, the narrator. Dr. Magiot writes: I have grown to dislike the word "Marxist." It is used so often to describe only a particular economic plan. I believe of course in that economic plan--in certain places and in certain times, here in Haiti, in Cuba, in Vietnam, in India. But Communism, my friend, is more than Marxism, just as Catholicism--remember I was born a Catholic too--is more than the Roman Curia. There is a mystique as well as a politique .... Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate. . .. I implore you-a knock on the door may not allow me to finish this sentence, so take it as the last request of a dying man--if you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith.

There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask? The question of faith and its links to utopian visions of a just society would recur in most of Greene's subsequent works, but these links, if presaged elsewhere, were first explicitly made in The Comedians. Indeed, Greene regarded this novel as his first properly political work. This is a surprising claim, as Greene had by 1932 published Stamboul Train, in which an aging Socialist doctor is killed while trying to return to Belgrade to lead a revolt against Socialism betrayed. In The Power and the Glory (1940), a weak-willed, drunken Mexican priest is stalked by an atheist and nationalist soldier of Indian descent. In 1948, Greene published The Heart of the Matter, set in Sierra Leone, where he had been active during the World War II in British intelligence. It is a book in which the fecklessness of the (mostly English) whites is all too easily translated into life and death for the Africans. The Quiet American (1955) was fairly uncompromising in its condemnation of French and U.S. policies in Vietnam.

Such sparing use of "political" is refreshing indeed in a world where the term is so often leached of its significance. WHAT, THEN, is politically fresh in The Comedians? After all, many of Greene's previous books, such as A Burnt-out Case (1961), which takes place in a leprosarium in the Congo, had squalid and violent settings. The innovation lies, in part, in the treatment accorded the natives. In Greene's sketches of Africa, the Africans served invariably as backdrop, as local people of color. Dr. Magiot, by contrast, is the hero-designate of The Comedians, a man of weight and texture. The other characters (blancs) are the comedians, without real commitments except to themselves. But perhaps the most significant change was Greene's nascent understanding of the politics of poverty in Latin America. In a setting such as Haiti, it is difficult to assert that the most pressing questions are the existential jitters of the (usually European) protagonists. In The Comedians the central characters, who with the exception of Dr. Magiot have no faith in any creed, all tend to connate their personal problems with issues of great moment.

Faith of some sort--any sort--is presented as preferable to the post-modem anomie that allows the uncommitted characters to declare so boldly their lack of faith, their neutrality. It is in large part the characters' lack of commitment, as well as this conflation of the personal and the political, that leads the reader to see them as two-bit actors. Dr. Magiot introduces the contrasting political and spiritual sensibility. In one scene, the physican is speaking courteously to a well-meaning American couple. Dogooders from Wisconsin, they are horrified to learn that the doctor is a Communist. "In the Western Hemisphere," explains Dr. Magiot, "in Haiti and elsewhere, we live under the shadow of your great and prosperous country. Much courage and patience is needed to keep one's head. I admire the Cubans, but I wish I could believe in their heads-and in their final victory." Greene, never much taken with socialism a la Russe, would nevertheless maintain a certain "hermeneutic of generosity" for people like Dr. Magiot, characters who in the face of great adversity could maintain some sort of faith in a just society. Such beliefs, Greene felt, resonated with his own faith.

Again and again, in later works, Greene's characters would compare Catholicism and Communism. Both credos, at their elusive purest, are protests against injustice. DR. MAGIOT'S observations came to mind in a stranger-than-fiction episode shortly after I saw the film and reread the book. I thought of him as I helped to extract a bullet from the forearm of a nine-year-old boy. The child had the misfortune to be sent by his mother on an errand that led him near a demonstration in Port-au-Prince. The soldiers, as they were and are still wont to do, opened fire on the unarmed demonstrators. I had the misfortune to be standing in the dirty and ill-stocked emergency room of the capital's chief public hospital when the boy arrived. He was one of several children who came into the emergency room that day--one of the less unfortunate, in fact. Assisting a young Haitian doctor (whose first and middle names were "Franklin Delano"), I was lectured at great length: "Do you know where this bullet comes from?" he asked, brandishing the thing in a forceps.

"It comes from the United States of America." At that moment, the latter-day Magiot was interrupted by a camera flash at the door. Bernard Diederich walked into the dank, bloody room. "I'm a journalist for Time," he apologized, but I knew him as a great friend of Graham Greene's, a man who in some ways sculpted The Comedians by serving as Greene's guide on the Dominican border after they were both expelled from Haiti. Diederich later wrote a book about Papa Doc, to which Graham Greene added a preface. I thought it might be ludicrous to tell Diederich that I'd just been thinking of Dr. Magiot. Besides, I was relieved that it was the journalist's turn to take the spleen of the Haitian physician, who had little use, we soon learned, for Time magazine. Imagined similarities between Dr. Franklin Delano and Greene's character soon faded: The young man spoke incessantly as he completed sewing up the child's rent skin. Magiot, a man whose "silence was as monumental as his conversation," was not one for desultory conversation.

In Magiot's house, Marx's Capital is "rebound in exactly the same calf so that at a distance it was indistinguishable from Les Miserables." Propped against these volumes is Renan's Vie de Jesus. It is not that these works, when mixed together and shaken under a ropical American sun, produce liberation theology. What makes liberation theology is the reaction of the poor in the face of oppression, their "irruption." In Haiti Greene encountered an almost biblical poverty, replete with dust, braying asses and limbless paupers scrambling to get alms (and to avoid the kicks of Duvalier's police). But the writer did not witness the irruption of the Haitian poor. That was to come later. In a sense, Greene was a precocious Catholic who anticipated, but could not (not from his desk in Antibes, in any case) elaborate, a theology that declared, with simple clarity, God's "preferential option for the poor." Greene traveled to where the poor lived and died, and his most compelling works are set there.

When asked by a friend what drew him to Latin America, Greene responded, "In those countries politics have seldom meant a mere alteration between rival electoral parties but have been a matter of life and death." By the time he wrote about Haiti, Greene had become a progressive. In his later years, he showed that he could be, in fact, downright partisan, expressing his views in numerous letters to British dailies and in trenchant essays that could not have sat well with many of his contemporaries. He traveled to Cuba, where he took on the received wisdom about Fidel Castro and about religious persecution there: "The enemies of the church in Cuba are not the Communist leaders," Greene wrote in the mid-1960s. 'They are Cardinal Spellman and Bishop Fulton Sheen, those doughty champions of cold war and counter-revolution, churchmen for whom Pope John XXIII seems to have lived in vain." These themes were taken up again in numerous essays and letters, as well as in novels. The Honorary Consul (1973), set in Argentina, offered many readers a first glimpse of liberation theology.

Monsignor Quixote (1982) is the story of a warm-hearted priest and his friend, a Communist ex-mayor, as they travel by car through the relatively benign ambiance of post-Franco Spain. The story of Greene's involvement in Central American politics is told in Getting to Know the General, a personal account of Greene's friendship with Gen. Omar Torrijos of Panama. Although Torrijos, a morally complex and somewhat erratic leader, could not have lived up to Greene's exacting standards, the general did become Greene's "tutor" in Central American history and politics. It was the general who introduced the writer to the liberation struggles going on in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Greene came to be friendly with many young Sandinistas before they came to power. Graham Greene died in April 1991. In the last decade of his life, he witnessed many changes, most of them sad. His friend Torrijos was killed in a mysterious plane crash in 1981. The Sandinistas were ousted from power after the Nicaraguans wearied of the costly war waged against them by Washington. And Haiti, unbelievably, became even poorer.

But Greene noted with pleasure its becoming the stage, however briefly, on which the aspirations of the poor were most explicitly spelled out. On Dec. 16, 1990, in the only democratic elections the country has ever known, Haitians elected as their President a Roman Catholic priest. And thereby liberation theology, with which the young cleric was strongly identified, was elevated to the status of public policy. "Aristide's inauguration represents immense hope, not only for the Haitian people, but also, I believe, for the people of the Dominican Republic and all the other peoples of Latin America. The beacon is no longer Nicaragua, it is now Haiti, and Haiti truly has the duty and the right to succeed on behalf of all people who desire this experience of liberation." These words were uttered not by Greene, but by Bishop Jacques Gaillot of Evreux, France. But they would have fit in the mouth of Greene. Graham Greene's fictional characters often locate themselves on the periphery of grand struggles--West versus East or non-West, colonialism versus independence movements, Communism versus Capitalism. But the writer himself was never comfortable with any of these totalizing frameworks.

He came to be, rather, on the side of the poor and the oppressed, a sympathetic fellow traveler who understood their suffering and their hope. Paul Farmer, M.D., is a physician-anthropologist who works in a clinic in rural Haiti. An instructor at Harvard Medical School, he is the author of AIDS and Accusation (Univ. of California Press, 1992). The Comedians Audiobook | Graham Greene | Audible.com "We are bad comedians, we aren't bad men" "We mustn't complain too much of being comedians—it's an honourable profession. If only we could be good ones the world might gain at least a sense of style. We have failed—that's all. We are bad comedians, we aren't bad men." I started out thinking I was going to just listen to a 'minor' Greene, and finished the novel once again shocked by my ability to completely underestimate Greene once again. The Comedians is a dark tragedy set in a Haitian Hell ruled by Papa Doc and his Tonton Macoute. Into this tortured hell floats Brown, the Smiths and Jones.

This sad troupe each struggles with overcoming fear, death, love and apathy while dancing on the edge of the abyss. It reminded me a little of Under the Volcano, but instead of one man's struggle with mescal, it is humanity's struggle with apathy and fear. "Worst reader ever" Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not? It is a wonderful, disturbing story. I would not recommend this version because the reader preforms his task so poorly. I have listened to dozens of recorded books. This was the worst performance I have heard. What other book might you compare The Comedians to and why? The End of the Affair, of course. How could the performance have been better? I was astounded at how badly the book was read. The reader's attempts at accents were...I don't know what to say...a little like a stew made by a drunken house-painter. Beyond that, the reader betrayed no understanding of timing, inflection, or the intent of the author. He almost manages to ruin the story itself...but not quite.

"Life in the midst of tragedy is still life" I picked up The Comedians when it was on sale at Audible because it was by Graham Greene and I really liked The End of the Affair. I started reading it because Shusaku Endo was frequently compared to Graham Greene (and Greene’s endorsement of Silence is one of the more famous endorsement lines–“Endo, to my mind, is one of the finest living novelists”). It was really my desire to understand Endo, more than my enjoyment of the book that kept me listening to the audiobook. The reader was intentionally dry. That matched the content, but did not enhance the listening. The book started and ended well, but there was some meandering in the middle that makes sense in the larger context of the books but I got a bored for a good 100 pages. It really was not until about 1/3 of the way through the book that Greene references the reason for the title. In a public conversation with a woman that Brown (the main character) is having an affair with, he suggests that they are all really comedians. He is using an older meaning of comedian, the idea that Greek actors held different masks.

But also (not mentioned, but I think understood) that Greek Comedies were usually poking fun at the powerful of the age. It is not really satire. But there is some hint of that idea. The book opens with Brown, Smith and Jones all on a boat headed toward Haiti. Brown owns a hotel in Haiti during the oppressive government of Papa Doc Duvalier. Jones is an unknown, but suspected from fairly early on of being a con man. Smith (and his wife) are from the United States. He was a very minor presidential candidate that is a proponent of vegetarianism as a way of life and a method toward world wide peace. Brown, aware of the political difficulty, knows how ridiculous it is for Smith to be attempting to create a vegetarian propaganda center in the midst of a repressive dictatorship and severe economic recession. Smith seems to be a stand-in for the US as a whole. Naive but well meaning and in the end unable to actually do anything about the larger situation, but still attempting to help in his own way. Jones is a minor character in the first half of the book when Brown is primarily concerned with Smith. But eventually Smith leaves and the Jones storyline becomes the main one.

I am not going to spoil the book, but what is most interesting about the book is the exploration of how important mixed motives are to any story. Brown, Smith, Jones and the other characters are far from perfect. But there is often good intentions mixed up with less honorable intentions. There is humor in the book, although it is dry humor. Greene is poking fun at Duvalier and how the powerful countries run over small countries and how the cold war propped up dictatorships. This book was published in 1966. And the exact setting is somewhat vague (but may be clear to people more familiar with the history of Haiti.) I do know that it is after the US initially withdrew from Haiti in 1962 and before the US came back to the US (sometime after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, which Duvalier claimed was the result of him cursing Kennedy.) I am glad I read this. I did not know much about the history of Haiti. And I think reading about a historical deterioration of society is useful to think about instead of post-apocalyptic future fantasy. The type of deterioration of society that is going on in Syria has happened before on different scales.

But this is not a super engaging novel. There were several places that I might have given up if I had not really wanted to finish because of the relationship to Endo. I will pick up another book or two from Greene, because he really is a good writer and I really did love The End of the Affair. But this is not one of my favorite classic novels. (But it really did pick up in the 100 pages or so.) I can see why so many compare Endo to Greene, even if there was not a known admiration between the two. "Why not a decent narrator for Greene's novels?" I don't mind so much Greene's hatred of the U.S. in this novel (set on the island of Hispaniola, mainly in Haiti), which is above average insofar as novels go in an intriguing, if not suspenseful, story line, and relatively interesting characters. Though I do prefer Greene's Catholic novels, since few can really successfully aim a grudge or resentment, the likes of which Greene had with the United States.

Yet, I must say that the narrator, who narrates virtually all Greene audiobooks besides "The End of the Affair" (narrated by Colin Firth), sounds perhaps persnickety and clearly clogged. Buy COMEDIANS Book Online at Low Prices in India | COMEDIANS Reviews & Ratings - Amazon.in 4.0 out of 5 stars Classic Greene in a sultry setting 8 August 2014 By Chris Bell - Published on Amazon.com Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase I didn't enjoy this novel quite as much as commentators such as Anthony Bourdain indicated I would; not as much, for example, as 'Our Man In Havana' or 'The Ministry of Fear'. Perhaps the denouement wasn't as satisfying as I'd hoped but it's still classic Greene and, as always the characterisation is brilliant. The author's writerly craft is masterful and yet largely invisible to the reader. The Hotel Trianon setting itself almost becomes a character - that's quite something considering Greene, as always, is economical with his descriptions, virtually giving the reader's imagination free rein.

'The Comedians' irked Haiti's François "Papa Doc" Duvalier to such an extent that he felt compelled to publicly insult Greene. For that reason alone 'The Comedians' is of historical importance. But arguably more vital than that, it's a literary entertainment of a kind that's rare if not extinct nowadays. 4 of 4 people found the following review helpful 5.0 out of 5 stars BETTER LATE THAN NEVER 15 June 2007 By Terry D. Robertson - Published on Amazon.com Format: Paperback Verified Purchase This is a late review and I won't go over what has already been said about this novel. Papa Doc's reign of terror is now historical fact. But if one reads this tight political thriller and one of Greene's best, you can see history repeating itself in the not too recent Hussein reign of terror or go back on a grander scale to Hitler. It goes on and on and THE COMEDIANS deliberately gives the main characters a "no name" status--common with no first names. They are people who hide themselves behind comedic masks and at times tell funny stories while the terror of the Touton Mocteuc consumes everything around them.

We are fortunate there is a paperback edition of this classic still available in print. It is a must read to learn the valuable lessons of the past. When the book was written, it was immediate and hard hitting. The author has visited Haiti twice and before finishing it, Papa Doc heard of the book and refused him entrance into the country, so the book ends on a boat leaving the country which was probably not the author's original ending due to his inability to enter Haiti again. A very important book for all. A must read. As I stated, I am not giving plot summary or details that have been written about previously in 20 some reviews, just an overview of the book and the impact it still maintains after 40 years. 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful Graham Greene, 86, Dies; Novelist of the Soul Graham Greene, 86, Dies; Novelist of the Soul By THE NEW YORK TIMES raham Greene, the British author whose novels of suspense and moral ambiguity plumbed the sordid politics of the modern world and the inner torments of mankind, died yesterday at La Providence Hospital in Vevey, near Lake Geneva in Switzerland. He was 86 years old.

The official cause of death was not immediately known, but his daughter, Caroline Bourget, told Reuters that her father died of a blood disease. Mr. Greene lived in an apartment in Antibes, France, but had traveled all over the world in search of subject matter during his 60-year writing career. Among Mr. Greene's 24 novels, many of which were adapted into films, were "The Power and the Glory," "The Heart of the Matter," "The Third Man," "The Quiet American," "Our Man in Havana," "The Comedians," "The Honorary Consul" and "The Human Factor." 27 Languages, 20 Million Copies His plays included "The Living Room," "The Potting Shed" and "The Complaisant Lover," and he wrote dozens of short stories. His work was translated into 27 languages and sold more than 20 million copies in hard-cover and paperback editions. He also wrote travel books, essays and children's stories, and two autobiographies, "A Sort of Life" and "Ways of Escape." An occasional contributor to newspapers and magazines, he even found time to write strong letters to the editor on political and literary matters.

That Mr. Greene never received the Nobel Prize in Literature was a source of regret and astonishment to many readers and publishing professionals. In his outspoken comments on world affairs in fiction and in fact -- including criticism of American military intervention in Vietnam and in Central America -- Mr. Greene felt an obligation to express his views first and foremost as a moralist. He was a convert to Catholicism but not, he asserted, a Catholic writer. "I think a writer ought to be a bit of grit in the state machine," he once said. "That applies to a democratic state machine, a socialist state machine or a Communist state machine." Mr. Greene was a superb storyteller with a gift for provoking controversy by writing topical novels in political settings. But many of his deepest concerns were spiritual: a soul working out its salvation or damnation amid the paradoxes and anomalies of 20th-century existence. Spiritual problems, however, were frequently overshadowed, especially for readers in this country, by Mr. Greene's distaste for what he regarded as American hypocrisy and materialism.

"The Quiet American" (1956) and "The Comedians" (1966), for example, offended some readers because of their criticism of United States policies in Vietnam and Haiti. Besides serious fiction, Mr. Greene also wrote what he described as "entertainments." These -- "Orient Express," "This Gun for Hire," "Brighton Rock" and "Our Man in Havana," for instance -- were first-rate novels of crime and intrigue. But they, too, showed a profound interest in the interplay of morality and abnormal behavior. "Brighton Rock," he wrote in his 1980 autobiography, "Ways of Escape," was "perhaps one of the best I ever wrote." In addition, Mr. Greene was often labeled a Roman Catholic writer, a description that annoyed him but that nevertheless colored understanding of his work. He was indeed a convert to Catholicism and he did deal with doctrinal issues, but he insisted that he was not a church publicist.

Roman Catholic Ideas But Church Objections "Only a few of my books have a religious emphasis -- 'Brighton Rock,' 'The Power and the Glory,' 'The End of the Affair' and 'The Heart of the Matter' -- but I don't consider myself a Catholic writer, but a writer who took characters with Catholic ideas as his material," Mr. Greene said in an interview with Alden Whitman of The New York Times in Paris in 1967. "After all, one of my novels, 'The Power and the Glory,' was condemned by the Holy Office in 1951." That book, in which the cult of the spiritual holds back the people, whose true enemies are the priests, shocked many Catholics. "I was not upset," Mr. Greene said in 1967. "In a private audience, Pope Paul told me he had read the novel and liked it. 'Parts of your novels will always offend some Catholics, but you should not bother,' the Pope said." Later, in a 1978 interview, Mr. Greene acknowledged a lingering skepticism about religion, and particularly Catholicism: "I don't like many English Catholics," he said. "I don't like conventional religious piety.

I'm more at ease with the Catholicism of Catholic countries. I've always found it difficult to believe in God. I suppose I'd now call myself a Catholic atheist." The Catholic-writer label was first affixed when "Brighton Rock" was published, and then more firmly after the publication of "The Heart of the Matter," one of his most popular books with both critics and public, though Mr. Greene said he thought it flawed. After the book came out, he wrote in 1980, "at a stroke I found myself regarded as a Catholic author in England, Europe and America -- the last title to which I had ever aspired." At His Works' Center, A Sense of Evil Yet Mr. Greene did not deny that he viewed the world through a moralist's eyes. This was also the conclusion of many critics. One critic, Richard Church, a Briton, summed up the prevailing attitude: "He sees his characters, and the scenes in which they make their penance, with an eye that elongates them and draws them into gestures made in a garish light.

He delights to expose the raw nerves of evil, showing it as a force in the world, a skeletonlike figure working visible mischief in the ordinary everyday affairs of men and women and children." Mr. Greene's writer's appeal, however, extended beyond readers concerned with good and evil to encompass those who liked a good story. He had some of the narrative flair of Robert Louis Stevenson, to whom he was related. He had, moreover, a talent for depicting local color, which he gathered at first hand; a keen sense of the dramatic; an ear for dialogue, and skill in pacing his prose. Mr. Greene's backgrounds and situations often grew out of his own wanderings. In the late 1930's, he wrote, "a restlessness set in then which has never quite been allayed; a desire to be a spectator of history, history in which I was concerned myself." Again and again in his autobiography, Mr.

Greene stressed this desire to be on the edge of danger; writing of his visits to Indochina, he mentions being attracted by the women, the evening light and, "above all, by the feeling of exhilaration which a measure of danger brings to a visitor with a return ticket." Prose That Traveled Too Swiftly to Stall "The average Greene novel," wrote the critic Adam de Hegedus, "seems to be based on a theory which is not unlike that principle of aerodynamics according to which the aircraft must maintain a specific speed or else it would tumble down. This speed Greene achieves by a masterly selection of detail, by a splendid economy of language and by swift and frequent changes of scene." Mr. Greene had a somewhat puffy face and eyes that looked down warily from his 6-foot 2-inch height. His manner was generally affable but shy. In talking, he had a tendency to skip over his R's. He had an obvious fondness for order and quiet that contrasted with his adventurous life. Born Oct.

2, 1904, in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England, he was one of four sons of Canon Charles Henry Greene and the former Marion Raymond Greene, who were cousins. Graham attended Berkhamsted School, of which his father was headmaster, and then Balliol College, Oxford. His childhood, he said, was unhappy. The Deadliest of Games Becomes a Habit The biographer Norman Sherry, in "The Life of Graham Greene, Volume I: 1904-1939" (Viking, 1989), described a crisis that the future author went through in his second-to-last year at Berkhamsted: two classmates persecuted him -- among other things, for being bad at games -- and he suffered a nervous collapse. His family then sent him to a psychoanalyst in London, prompting an experience that in the long run, Mr. Sherry wrote, "may well have established his life's pattern of escaping from the impossible or the boring into unknown and dangerous environments which would stimulate, offer fresh experiences and also provide copy for his novels." Mr.

Greene himself wrote later that "the psychoanalysis fixed the boredom as hypo fixes the image on a negative." So he took to playing Russian roulette with an elder brother's revolver. "I slipped the bullet into a chamber and, holding the revolver behind my back, spun the chambers round," he recalled. "I put the muzzle of the revolver to my right ear and pulled the trigger. There was a minute click, and looking down the chamber I could see that the charge had moved into place. I was out by one." Mr. Greene took the revolver with him to Balliol and continued to play Russian roulette until he found that "I was beginning to pull the trigger about as casually as I might take an aspirin tablet." Later on, Mr. Greene experimented with opium, marched across Liberia and went, in wartime, into Malaya, Kenya and Indochina. Out of Oxford, where he had briefly been a member of the Communist Party, Mr. Greene worked as a copy editor on The Times of London from 1926 to 1930. "I am journalistically minded," he once said.

And he fiercely took issue with those who questioned the journalistic accuracy of his fiction, especially in "The Quiet American." "Some critics have referred to a strange violent 'seedy' region of the mind (why did I ever popularize that last adjective?) which they call Greeneland, and I have sometimes wondered whether they go round the world blinkered," he wrote later. " 'This is Indochina,' I want to exclaim, 'this is Mexico, this is Sierra Leone carefully and accurately described. I have been a newspaper correspondent as well as a novelist. I assure you that the dead child lay in the ditch in just that attitude. In the canal of Phat Diem the bodies stuck out of the water. But I know that argument is useless. They won't believe the world they haven't noticed is like that." His Fiancee's Religion Becomes His Own It was just before he joined The Times that he became a convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism. Summarizing the experience, the psychiatrist and author Robert Coles wrote in 1989, in The New York Times Book Review, that it came about through Mr.

Greene's relationship with his future wife, Vivien Dayrell-Browning, herself a convert to Catholicism. Her "moral and religious preoccupations became very much his," Dr. Coles wrote, and "at the age of 22, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church." In an interview published in 1983, Mr. Greene said a first step in the process was the day when, while attending a Catholic service, "I slipped a note into a collection box, asking for instruction because my fiancee was Catholic. "I wanted a better grasp of the nature of her faith. I had no thought of becoming a convert myself." His subsequent conversion, he said, "was purely intellectual," because of the arguments of a priest, a Father Trollope, "which persuaded me that God's existence was a probability." On another occasion, Mr. Greene wrote that it was not until years later, when he had first traveled to Mexico, that he found "emotional belief" as opposed to intellectual acceptance of his religion. A year after his conversion, Mr. Greene married Miss Dayrell-Browning. The couple had a son and a daughter and then separated in the 1960's.

His daughter, Caroline Bourget, lives in Jongny, Switzerland. His son, Francis, lives in Devon, England. Mr. Greene's first two novels, "The Man Within" and "The Name of Action," were written while he was on The Times. He left that newspaper in 1930 to become a movie critic, first for the periodical Night and Day and then for The Spectator, for the next 10 years. Early in this period he began his entertainments ("The difference between an entertainment and a novel is about 20,000 words") with "Orient Express," which was titled "Stamboul Train" in Britain. This thriller almost immediately became popular, as were most of his in that genre. His reputation as a novelist soared with "Brighton Rock," published in 1938, which deals with homicide in the British resort town of Brighton. International renown came in the years after the war, especially with "The Heart of the Matter" in 1948. The scene of this novel, considered among his best, is in West Africa, where Mr. Greene did intelligence work for the British Government during World War II. The protagonist is Maj.

Henry Scobie, an essentially commonplace man capable of pity to the point of obsession. It is pity that does the major in. Although a Roman Catholic, his sympathy for, and understanding of, his wife and his mistress lead him to commit suicide to keep from hurting their feelings. The burden of love proves too much for him. 'The Quiet American' Is an American Success Among Mr. Greene's big successes in this country was "The Quiet American," published in 1956. The novel is a tart study of an American Government do-gooder in Saigon during the anti-French uprisings of the mid-1950's. The writer insisted that he was not anti-American and that his novel recorded only what he saw in Saigon, where he was the correspondent, in 1954, for The New Republic. Mr. Greene was especially fond of "The Power and the Glory," a novel published in 1940. It is the story of a manhunt in the jungles and mountains of Mexico. The hunted is the last priest in a state where religion is outlawed: an imperfect priest, prey to alcohol and lust, yet a humble man who loves God. Many of Mr.

Greene's books were made into movies, but he said he felt the movies did not serve him well. "I hate the adaptations of my books, except when I do them myself, and then I don't always like them," he said. Once he had attained success, Mr. Greene spent much of his time traveling. But he worked during these journeys, too, dictating and revising. "I like writing after breakfast," he explained, "and revising after a good dinner, when I have Dutch courage." He was a steady writer who was not afraid to discard projects, even when they were well advanced, if they failed to satisfy him. "I hope I'm an artist," he told a visitor in 1967; on another occasion, in a bleaker mood, he remarked, "I have no talent; it's just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time." The Effects of Place And of Henry James Mr. Greene was often asked what other writers had influenced him, and for this he had a ready reply: "What one reads doesn't influence one as much as where one is. Still, a great many writers have had their effect on me.

The serious ones, I guess, were Ford Madox Ford, Joseph Conrad and Henry James. He was my idol, but to say he influenced me is a bit absurd -- like saying a mountain influenced a mouse." Mr. Greene's structuring of his novels seemed ideally suited to the camera and the stage. "I have a theatrical mind," he once said. But his own plays -- including "The Living Room," "The Potting Shed," "The Complaisant Lover," "Carving a Statue" and "The Return of A. J. Raffles" -- were not outstandingly successful. Mr. Greene's long writing career made him wealthy as well as famous. He was little affected, because he preferred privacy to basking in adulation. He enjoyed his income, nonetheless, for it permitted him to live in considerable comfort and to eat well.

Of his many works, "The Honorary Consul," he said, was especially hard to write, and "perhaps the novel I prefer to all the others," while "Travels With My Aunt" was "the only book I have written for the fun of it." "Travels With My Aunt," which came out in 1969, is a lighthearted novel about a retired bank employee traveling around the world with 75-year-old dowager who has a black lover named Wordsworth. Mr. Greene's literary fame was recognized formally in 1966, when he was named by Queen Elizabeth II as a Companion of Honor. In 1986, he received one of the highest British honors, the Order of Merit. Critical enthusiasm waned for Mr. Greene's later works. "The Honorary Consul" (1973), "The Human Factor" (1978) and "The Captain and the Enemy" (1988) all received uneven reviews. Mr. Greene himself had long since taken a detached view of questions of literary success or failure.

Striking the understated note of guilt and gloom that was catnip to his loyal readers, he told an interviewer in 1971: "One fails in all sorts of ways in life, doesn't one, which are much more important than writing books. In human relations and that sort of thing." But another estimation of his feelings about his work came in "Ways of Escape," when he wrote, "Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human situation." Opening Words on the Moral Anxieties of an Anguished Century In the course of a career that spanned more than six decades, Graham Greene wrote 24 novels, along with many short stories, essays and plays and two volumes of autobiography. Here is a sampling from the opening chapters of some of his novels and a list of some major works. Mr. Tench went out to look for his ether cylinder: out into the blazing Mexican sun and the bleaching dust. A few buzzards looked down from the roof with shabby indifference: he wasn't carrion yet. A faint feeling of rebellion stirred in Mr.

Tench's heart, and he wrenched up a piece of the road with splintering fingernails and tossed it feebly up at them. One of them rose and flapped across the town: over the tiny plaza, over the bust of an ex-president, ex-general, ex-human being, over the two stalls which sold mineral water, towards the river and the sea. It wouldn't find anything there: the sharks looked after the carrion on that side. Mr. Tench went on across the plaza. He said "Buenos dias" to a man with a gun who sat in a small patch of shade against a wall. But it wasn't like England: the man said nothing at all, just stared malevolently up at Mr. Tench, as if he had never had any dealings with the foreigner, as if Mr. Tench were not responsible for his two gold bicuspid teeth. -- From "The Power and the Glory" (1940, Viking) Wilson sat on the balcony of the Bedford Hotel with his bald pink knees thrust against the ironwork. It was Sunday and the Cathedral bell clanged for matins.

On the other side of Bond Street, in the windows of the High School, sat the young negresses in dark-blue gym smocks engaged on the interminable task of trying to wave their wirespring hair. Wilson stroked his very young moustache and dreamed, waiting for his gin-and-bitters. Sitting there, facing Bond Street, he had his face turned to the sea. His pallor showed how recently he had emerged from it into the port: so did his lack of interest in the schoolgirls opposite. -- From "The Heart of the Matter" (1948, Viking) One never knows when the blow may fall. When I saw Rollo Martins first I made this note on him for my security police files: "In normal circumstances a cheerful fool. Drinks too much and may cause a little trouble. Whenever a woman passes raises his eyes and makes some comment, but I get the impression that really he'd rather not be bothered. Has never really grown up and perhaps that accounts for the way he worshiped Lime." I wrote there that phrase "in normal circumstances" because I met him first at Harry Lime's funeral.

It was February, and the gravediggers had been forced to use electric drills to open the frozen ground in Vienna's Central Cemetery. It was as if even nature were doing its best to reject Lime, but we got him in at last and laid the earth back on him like bricks. -- From "The Third Man" (1950, Viking) After dinner I sat and waited for Pyle in my room over the rue Catinat: he had said, "I'll be with you at latest by 10," and when midnight had struck I couldn't stay quiet any longer and went down into the street. A lot of old women in black trousers squatted on the landing; it was February and I suppose too hot for them in bed. One trishaw driver pedaled slowly by towards the river front, and I could see lamps burning where they had disembarked the new American planes. There was no sign of Pyle anywhere in the long street. Of course, I told myself, he might have been detained for some reason at the American Legation, but surely in that case he would have telephoned to the restaurant -- he was very meticulous about small courtesies.

I turned to go indoors when I saw a girl waiting in the next doorway. I couldn't see her face, only the white silk trousers and the long flowered robe, but I knew her for all that. -- From "The Quiet American" (1956, Viking) Novels: Orient Express (1932) This Gun for Hire (1936) Brighton Rock (1938) The Power and the Glory (1940) The Ministry of Fear (1943) The Heart of the Matter (1948) The Third Man (1950) The End of the Affair (1951) The Quiet American (1956) Our Man in Havana (1958) A Burnt-Out Case (1961) Graham Greene Book List - FictionDB General Fiction Dec-2015 Written by the great Graham Greene with pictures by master illustrator Edward Ardizzone, this is a children's classic. Mr Potter is a proud shopkeeper with a busy shop, until one day a big superstore opens across the street. The new store has a deliv...

General Fiction Jul-2006 Now with a new introduction by David Rieff, The Lawless Roads is the result of Graham Greene’s expedition to Mexico in the late 1930s to report on how the inhabitants had reacted to the brutal anticlerical purges of President Calles. His jour... General Fiction Feb-2005 The complete stories of a 20th century master of fiction Affairs, obsessions, ardors, fantasy, myth, legends, dreams, fear, pity, and violence this magnificent collection of stories illuminates all corners of the human experience. Including four prev... General Fiction Nov-2004 Querry, a world-famous architect, is the victim of a terrible attack of indifference: he no longer finds meaning in art or pleasure in life. Arriving anonymously at a Congo leper village, he is diagnosed as the mental equivalent of a "burnt-out case,... Suspense Oct-2004 "No Man's Land" is a profoundly chilling tale of espionage, superstition, and betrayal, and bears all the hallmarks of Greene's most famous works. Arriving in the Harz Mountains, within striking distance of the Iron Curtain, civilian Brown appears to...

General Fiction Oct-2004 A GRIPPING SPY THRILLER THAT UNFOLDS ABOARD THE MAJESTIC ORIENT EXPRESS AS IT CROSSES EUROPE FROM OSTEND TO CONSTANTINOPLE. WEAVING A WEB OF SUBTERFUGE, MURDER AND POLITICS ALONG THE WAY, THE NOVEL FOCUSES UPON THE DISTURBING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MYA... General Fiction Nov-2001 "The Third Man"is Greene's brilliant recreation of post-war Vienna, a city of desolate poverty occupied by four powers. Rollo Martins, a second-rate novelist, arrives penniless in Vienna to visit his old friend and hero Harry Lime. Harry is dead, but... Suspense Dec-1992 Raven is an ugly man dedicated to ugly deeds. His cold-blooded killing of a European Minister of War is an act of violence with chilling repercussions, not just for Raven himself but for the nation as a whole. The money he receives in payment for the... General Fiction Jan-1991 These twelve stories, dating from 1923 to 1989, represent the quintessential Graham Greene.

Rich in gallows humor, they have the power both to move and to entertain. Included here are such famous stories as "The Last Word", "The News in English", "Th... General Fiction Nov-1988 Victor Baxter is a young boy when a secretive stranger known simply as the Captain takes him from his boarding school to live in London. Victor becomes the surrogate son and companion of a woman named Liza, who renames him Jim and depends on him for ... General Fiction May-1988 Mr Jones, a quiet unprepossessing man who works as a translator in a Swiss chocolate factory, meets and falls in love with Anna-Luise, many years his junior and the daughter of Doctor Fischer, the notorious toothpaste millionaire.... General Fiction May-1988 First published in 1980, Graham Greene retraces the experiences and encounters of his long and extraordinary life. His restlessness is legendary, he has travelled like an explorer seeking out people and political situations at the dangerous edge of t... General Fiction Feb-1986 During World War II a group of men is held prisoner by the Germans, who determine that three of them must die.

This is the story of how one of those men trades his wealth for his life and lives to pay for his act in utterly unexpected ways."... General Fiction Nov-1985 For everyone who s ever wondered what it really takes to be a spy, legendary author Graham Greene ("The Third Man, The Quiet American") and his brother Hugh have compiled this irresistible selection of fiction, memoir, and tricks of the trade straigh... General Fiction Mar-1985 In August 1981 my bag was packed for my fifth visit to Panama when the news came to me over the telephone of the death of General Omar Torrijos Herrera, my friend and host. . . At that moment the idea came to me to write a short personal memoir. . . ... Suspense Aug-1983 In a provincial Argentinean town, Charley Fortnum, a British consul with dubious authority and a weakness for drink, is kidnapped by Paraguayan revolutionaries who have mistaken him for the American ambassador. Dr. Eduardo Plarr, a local physician wi...

General Fiction Mar-1983 His mind crowded with vivid images of Africa, Graham Greene set off in 1935 to discover Liberia, a remote and unfamiliar republic founded for released slaves. Now with a new introduction by Paul Theroux, Journey Without Maps is the spellbinding... General Fiction Oct-1982 When Father Quixote, a local priest of the Spanish village of El Toboso who claims ancestry to Cervantes fictional Don Quixote, is elevated to the rank of monsignor through a clerical error, he sets out on a journey to Madrid to purchase purple socks... Suspense Sep-1982 In a small continental country civil war is raging. Once a lecturer in medieval French, now a confidential agent, D is a scarred stranger in a seemingly casual England, sent on a mission to buy coal at any price. Initially, this seems to be a matter ... Suspense Sep-1982 ""A master thriller and a remarkable portrait of a twisted character." Time" For Arthur Rowe, the trip to the charity fete was a joyful step back into adolescence, a chance to forget the nightmare of the Blitz and the aching guilt of having merciful...

General Fiction Aug-1982 ""Greene had wit and grace and character and story and a transcendent universal compassion that places him for all time in the ranks of world literature " John le Carre" Graham Greene s first published novel tells the story of Andrews, a young man wh... General Fiction Jun-1982 ""The purser took the last landing-card in his hand and watched the passengers cross the wet quay, over a wilderness of rails and points, round the corners of abandoned trucks."" As the Orient Express hurtles across Europe on its three-day journey fr... General Fiction Aug-1981 From master storyteller Graham Greene comes the tale of Anthony Farrant, who has boasted, lied and cheated his way through jobs all over the world. Then his adoring twin sister, Kate, gets him taken on as the bodyguard of Krogh, her lover and boss, a... General Fiction Jun-1978 Graham Green was born into a veritable tribe of Greenes - six children, eventually, and sic cousins - based in Berkhamstead at the public school where his father was headmaster. In A SORT OF LIFE Greene recalls schooldays and Oxford, adolescent encou...

General Fiction Mar-1978 (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)Graham Greene s passion for moral complexity and his stylistic aplomb were perfectly suited to the cat-and mouse game of the spy novel, a genre he practically invented and to which he periodically returned while fashioni... General Fiction Nov-1977 Bertram had no belief in luck. He was not superstitious. A conspicuously unsuccessful assistant accountant, he was planning to get married for the second time. Quite quietly: St Luke's, Maida Hill, and then two weeks in Bournemouth. But Dreuther, a d... General Fiction Jan-1970 Greene's fine sense of humor is displayed in this warm and far-reaching comic novel, Travels with My Aunt, a bestseller when it appeared originally. At his mother's funeral, Henry Pulling, a stuffy, retired bank manager with an interest in dahlias, m... General Fiction May-1967 Author William Harris is spending the fag-end of the season at Antibes finishing his first attempt at historical biography, but he becomes more and more interested and involved in the antics of two homosexual interior decorators intent on stealing Po...

General Fiction Feb-1966 Three men meet on a ship bound for Haiti, where corruption and terror reign under the dictatorship of Papa Doc and the Tontons Macoute, his sinister secret police. Disillusioned and noncommittal, they are the "comedians" of Greene's title. Brown is a... General Fiction Jul-1963 A collection of four pieces: UNDER THE GARDEN, A VISIT TO THE MORIN, DREAM OF A STRANGE LAND and A DISCOVERY IN THE WOODS. In the VINTAGE CLASSICS series. From the author of THE COMEDIANS and TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT.... General Fiction Oct-1962 Drover, a Communist bus driver, is in prison, sentenced to death for killing a policeman during a riot at Hyde Park Corner. A battle for a reprieve with many participants ensues: the Assistant Commissioner, high-principled and over-worked; Conrad, a ... General Fiction Apr-1962 In'The Basement Room'a small boy witnesses an event that blights his whole life.

Like the other stories in this book (written between 1929 and 1954), it hinges on the themes that dominate Graham Greene's novels fear, pity and violence, pursuit, betra... General Fiction Jan-1962 Graham Greene set two of his novels, "A Burnt out Case" and "The Heart of the Matter" in Africa. Each arose out of visits to Africa - during each of which he kept a journal. Both are printed here and provide a glimpse of the novelist responding to th... General Fiction Nov-1961 This book is a reproduction of a volume found in the collection of the University of Michigan Library. It is produced from digital images created through the Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The digital images for this book were cleaned an... General Fiction Nov-1958 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 fr...

General Fiction May-1957 The 1957 English play, The Potting Shed, a 3-act play and a psychological family drama that carries themes of marriage, faith, religion, resurrection, betrayal, deception. It begins with the patriach dying, and his grown children are sent for by tele... General Fiction Aug-1956 Into the intrigue and violence of Indo-China comes Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy through a mysterious 'Third Force'. As his naive optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler finds it hard to stand and watch. ... General Fiction Jun-1954 London in the 1950s. A mysterious house, home to a family that has seen better days, will not yield its secrets. And a love affair turns to tragedy... Graham Greene, one of the foremost writers of our time, based the play on his own passionate but do... Suspense Jan-1950 Somewhere in shadowy post-war Vienna, where everyone has something to sell on the black market, lurks the third man who witnessed the murder of Harry Lime. Novelist Holly Martins is haunted by the death of his friend. His search for the killer makes ...

General Fiction Jul-1948 In this widely acclaimed modern classic, Graham Greene delves deep into character to tell the dramatic, suspenseful story of a good man's conflict between passion and faith. A police commissioner in a British-governed, war-torn West African state, S... General Fiction Jan-1938 This masterpiece of psychological realism is often considered Graham Greene's best novel, a classic of its kind. It is a fascinating study of evil, sin, and the "appalling strangeness of the mercy of God." Set in Brighton, England, among the criminal...

Question: In which Country is Graham Greene's Novel The Comedians set?
Answer: HAITI