Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

'No serious writer of this century has more thoroughly invaded and shaped the public imagination than Graham Greene' - Time

'Our Man In Havana' is Greene's satirical tale of espionage and intrigue.

Jim Wormold is selling vacuum cleaners in Cuba before being enlisted by a fellow Brit named Hawthorne to spy on Cuba for England.

Wormold is out of his league in the world of cloak and dagger missions, sensitive information gathering, and covert operations. He is a middle-aged father of a 17 year-old beauty named Milly, his wife ran off with an American some years before.

Running a small vacuum cleaner business in Havana with an assistant named Lopez, the British Secret Service has completely misjudged who he is. Unwilling to disappoint them or to give up the $150 a month salary plus $150 a month expenses, he fabricates coded reports of military construction sites (drawn by tracing vacuum cleaner parts), expenses accounts, and lists of fictitious operatives and informants.

Things get really complicated when the home office in London is impressed with his efforts and sends him a secretary named Beatrice and a radio operator named Rudy....

About the Author

Perhaps the ultimate moralist thriller-writer, Greene had a facility for combining literary observation with populist plot, and himself divided his books into serious fiction (The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American) and "entertainments" (Brighton Rock, Our Man in Havana).

Evelyn Waugh singled out for praise the new coolly cinematic quality of his style, but he is now most known for a sort of atheistic Catholicism (George Orwell sneers that Greene thinks "there is something rather distingué in being damned; Hell is a sort of high-class nightclub, entry to which is reserved for Catholics only").

However, when the Vatican condemned The Power and the Glory and demanded revisions, Greene merely referred the Pope to his publisher.

Graham Greene was a prolific writer and many of his books have been made into films. To find out more about him, click on the link below:

http://greeneland.tripod.com/index.htm

Here's the opening scene from the 1959 British comedy noir starring Alec Guinness.

A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks

'A vicious satire on modern life.' Daily Telegraph

`Faulks never writes a hackneyed or lazy sentence, polishing each with care' Independent on Sunday

`This intriguing book... takes the reader on a whistle-stop tour of society...' Waterstone's Books Quarterly

London, the week before Christmas, 2007.

Over seven days we follow the lives of seven major characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book-reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on skunk and reality TV; and a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop.

With daring skill, the novel pieces together the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life.

Greed, the dehumanising effects of the electronic age and the fragmentation of society are some of the themes dealt with in this savagely humorous book. The writing on the wall appears in letters ten feet high, but the characters refuse to see it – and party on as though tomorrow is a dream.

Sebastian Faulks probes not only the self-deceptions of this intensely realised group of people, but their hopes and loves as well. As the novel moves to its gripping climax, they are forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they inhabit.

This hugely ambitious novel is a delightful and witty satire on contemporary London life, says The Guardian...

Hardly anyone is spared in this searing dissection of modern British society according to Tibor Fischer in The Daily Telegraph

About the Author

Sebastian Faulks was born on 20 April 1953 and educated at Wellington College and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was the first literary editor of The Independent and became deputy editor of the Independent on Sunday before leaving in 1991 to concentrate on writing. He has been a columnist for The Guardian (1992-8) and the Evening Standard (1997-9). He continues to contribute articles and reviews to a number of newspapers and magazines. He wrote and presented the Channel 4 Television series, Churchill's Secret Army, which was broadcast in 1999.

Though his best known work is the bestselling Birdsong (1993), The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives is a multiple biography of the lives of the artist Christopher Wood, airman Richard Hillary and spy Jeremy Wolfenden. His fifth novel, Charlotte Gray (1998), completes the loose trilogy of books about France with an account of the adventures of a young Scottish woman who becomes involved with the French resistance during the Second World War. A film adaptation of the novel, starring Cate Blanchett, was first screened in 2002. His next novel, On Green Dolphin Street (2001), is a love story set against the backdrop of the Cold War. Human Traces, a book set in the 19th century and telling the tale of two friends who set up a pioneering asylum, was published in 2005. Engleby was published in 2007.

Faulks on Fiction is a compelling and personal look at the British novel through its greatest characters - the heroes, lovers, snobs and villains - and is also a major BBC series. Click on the video link to see Faulks interviewing contemporary writers on characters in fiction.



Sebastian Faulks lives with his wife and three children in London. He was awarded the CBE in 2002.

Find out more by clicking on the link below.

Find out more about Sebastian Faulks here...