Our Man Down in Havana: The Story behind Graham Greene’s Cold War Spy Novel
About this audiobook
Exploring 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.
When US 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. The former MI6 officer had stumbled upon the ideal setting for a comic espionage story. Three years later, he returned in the midst of Fidel Castro’s guerrilla insurgency against a US-backed dictator to begin writing his iconic novel Our Man in Havana. Twelve weeks after its publication, the Cuban Revolution triumphed in January 1959, soon transforming a capitalist playground into a communist stronghold.
Combining biography, history, and politics, Our Man Down in Havana investigates the real story behind Greene’s fictional one. This includes his many visits to a pleasure island that became a revolutionary island, turning his chance involvement into a political commitment. His Cuban novel describes an amateur agent who dupes his intelligence chiefs with invented reports about “concrete platforms and unidentifiable pieces of giant machinery.” With eerie prescience, Greene’s satirical tale had foretold the Cold War’s most perilous episode, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Exploiting 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.
About the author
Christopher Hull, PhD, is senior lecturer in Spanish & Latin American studies at the University of Chester. His research focuses on British interactions with Latin America. He first visited Cuba in 1997 and has traveled extensively around the island during seventeen further visits, often in the footsteps of Graham Greene. He lives in England.
With acting credits that span stage and screen, Gildart Jackson is most often recognized for his role as Gideon on Charmed. Other notable TV roles include Jackson Palmer on Providence and Simon Prentiss on General Hospital, as well as guest appearances on Stargate: Atlantis, Las Vegas, and CSI. Theater roles include Trigorin in The Seagull, Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, and Adrian in Private Eyes at the Old Globe.
