Graham Greene's hilarious Our Man in Havana is both more humorous and entertaining read than The Comedians, but doesn't exploit the Cuban setting as effectively Port-au-Prince in the other famous novel. Maybe it reflects my own greater familiarity with Port-au-Prince than Havana, a city I have never visited, but Havana does not come to life as easily here as Port-au-Prince and Duvalierville in Comedians. Sure, the famous nightclubs, the Paseo, and Havana's whorehouses and gambling dens (and the many pimps, bootblacks, and crooked cops) are key to the story, with the Batista regime tumbling, yet something was amiss here. That said, Greene's novel manages to fuse comedy with prescient visions of the importance of Cuba in the Cold War and the imminent Cuban Revolution, and all through a tale of sheer absurdity poking fun at the British Secret Service! Anyone who romanticizes pre-Castro Cuba should read this entertaining novel just for an idea of the volatile period of Batista or the institutionalization of Havana's existence as entertainment for tourists. Oh, and Captain Segura ain't got nothing on the macoutes of Duvalierist Haiti.
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