Rating: 
Summary: Amusing story
Review: "Our Man in Havana" is the crime story of a vacuum cleaner salesman. He has got a daughter, Milly, who reached an "expensive" age. So he has to earn extra money and becomes agent of the British Secret Service. A funny novel begins. For the reader it's excited and interested to follow the different relations of Wormold, the main character, with his faked agents and the real agents of the M.I.6!
Rating:
Summary: A very funny book!
Review: A vacuum cleaner salesman turned secret service spy? The premise alone should have you hooked and the book is just as good. Filled with subtle humor and interesting twists, Greene is one of the most talented novelists I've had the pleasure to read. This book is a buried treasure of modern literature. Go get it!
Rating:
Summary: Pre-Castro Cuba and an excess of daiquiris make a good read
Review: Aha, with wit and irony, Mr. Greene takes us on a journey through pre-Castro Cuba, parts of Havana nightlife which are sadly no more. Its a delightful little read, of course, made much more delightful if you are sipping a daiquiri, on the rocks please, and none of that frozen strawberry stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: Amusing
Review: Amusing This is really a funny book to read. Greene makes light of spying during the cold war. Wormold a vacuum cleaner dealer is recruited as a spy for a British secret - organisation in Cuba. He invents all his information to keep the government money coming for his daughter who has expensive wishes. Wormold turns in drawings of vacuum cleaner parts as part of an imaginary secret installation in Cuba and invents agents that all have to be paid. During the whole story nobody remarks, that he is all the time telling lies and still at the end as they know it, they can't do anything because he would show off the secret-agency. Good stuff!
Rating:
Summary: A very funny story
Review: Funny I had to read it at school as a home reader. A man in Havana who sells vacuum cleaners pretended to recruit sub-agents. But he didn't take his job very seriously. He sent fake stories to London. A so stupid story it made me laugh a bit. His work was only a joke and he did it only to get money for his daughter. But the story develops to a dangerous deal and the man in Havana will stop it very soon. I read the book with lots of pleasure.
Rating:
Summary: Greene¿s most hilarious and most mordant entertainment.
Review: Gleefully combining the raucous humor of absurdity with slyly subtle wordplay and caustic satire, Greene entertains on every level, skewering British intelligence-gathering services during the Cold War. Setting the novel in the flamboyant atmosphere of pre-revolutionary Havana, where virtually anything can be had at a price, Greene establishes his contrasts and ironies early, creating a hilarious set piece which satirizes both the British government's never-satisfied desire for secrets about foreign political movements and their belief that the most banal of activities constitute threats to national security.Ex-patriot James Wormold is a mild-mannered, marginal businessman and vacuum cleaner salesman, whose spoiled teenage daughter sees herself as part of the equestrian and country club set. Approached by MI6 in a public restroom, Wormold finds himself unwillingly recruited to be "our man in Havana," a role which will reward him handsomely for information and allow him some much-needed financial breathing room. Encouraged to recruit other agents to provide more information (and earn even more money), he chooses names at random from the country club membership list and fabricates personas for them, featuring them in fictionalized little dramas which he churns out and forwards to his "handlers." Always careful to fulfill their expectations exactly, Wormold becomes a more and more important "spy," his stories become more creative, his "enemies" find him and his "agents" to be dangerous, and his friends and the real people whose names were used as fictional agents begin to turn up dead. Skewering British intelligence for being such willing dupes of a vacuum cleaner salesman who never wanted to be an agent in the first place, Greene betrays both his familiarity with the inner workings of the intelligence service, of which he was once a member, and his rejection of Cold War politics. In a conclusion which will satisfy everyone who has ever become impatient with political maneuvering, Greene carries the absurdities of power to their limits, orchestrating a grand finale which shows British politicians at their most venal--and most ridiculous. Ascerbic in its humor and delightfully refreshing in its choice of "hero," this novel is Greene at his very best. Mary Whipple
Rating:
Summary: One of the most satisfying novels of our time...
Review: Graham Greene is without a doubt my favorite author and this is my favorite work by a man who should be revered as one of the literary greats of the modern world. I love this book because I find it hysterical, but not shallow. Greene is witty, clever and poignent, a combination which seems to elude most other authors of his time. I reread Our Man in Havana every few months and, amazingly, it gets better every time.
Rating:
Summary: The Spy Who Invented Himself
Review: I first read this book several years ago when it was titled "The Tailor Of Panama" and written by John le Carré. I finally realize why I enjoyed that earlier book so, in that le Carré modeled the work so directly (and with proper acknowledgement) on this 1958 masterpiece. Le Carré's effort isn't bad, but its often-maudlin tone detracts from the humor of the situation. Not so Greene, who subtitled his book "An Entertainment" and meant it. He doesn't waive all suspense and tragic overtones in search of punchlines; one of the chief joys of this book is how well it works as a spy novel. But unlike heavier Greene works like "The Power And The Glory," "Our Man" plays in a kind of high-adventure, almost Ian Fleming kind of way. Greene's novel concerns a struggling British vacuum salesman living in Cuba, Jim Wormold, recruited by U.K. espionage to provide intelligence on the local scene as it becomes a hot spot in East-West relations. Wormold can't resist their money, but decides that instead of giving honest information, he will make up stories with the "assistance" of a stable of recruited agents he invents on the spot. "Just lie and keep your freedom," advises Wormold's best friend, an old German doctor with a mysterious background named Hasselbacher. "They don't deserve the truth...They have no money, except what they take from men like you and me." So Wormold does exactly that, for the benefit of his blossoming daughter, the flower of his heart whose faith in him and God he seeks to preserve though he doesn't share either belief. The result is a tangle of tall tales about alcoholic pilots and Mata Hari (...) he basically makes up as he goes along. At one point, he wonders whether he pushed his luck when he presents the plans for one of his vacuum cleaner models as a secret Soviet base, but he's hopelessly addicted to his fiction almost as much for the pleasure of creation as for the financial reward: "It astonished Wormold how quickly he could reply to any questions about his characters; they seemed to live on the threshold of consciousness - he had only to turn on a light and there they were, frozen in some characteristic action." Wormold is playing a dangerous game; in addition to snookering his own country, he is also attracting the notice both of the rival camp and the Havana police in the intimidating person of Captain Segura, a rumored torturer who covets Wormold's daughter. But in oddly detached fashion, perhaps because his life lost much of its purpose when his wife left him years ago, Wormold improvises his way through with cosmic aplomb. There is a deeper meaning to this book, based on Greene's belief that neither East nor West deserved any special allegiance during the Cold War. One character puts it this way: "They haven't left us much to believe, have they? Even disbelief. I can't believe in anything bigger than a home, or anything vaguer than a human being." It's possible to take issue with Greene's value-neutral attitude, but his execution is so deft, and his style so entertaining, that you can't help but admire him. "Our Man In Havana" is a thoroughly mesmerizing comedy that manages to impart some subversive truths about where the moral lines exist between serving one's government and serving one's fellow man.
Rating:
Summary: The Spy Who Invented Himself
Review: I first read this book several years ago when it was titled "The Tailor Of Panama" and written by John le Carré. I finally realize why I enjoyed that earlier book so, in that le Carré modeled the work so directly (and with proper acknowledgement) on this 1958 masterpiece. Le Carré's effort isn't bad, but its often-maudlin tone detracts from the humor of the situation. Not so Greene, who subtitled his book "An Entertainment" and meant it. He doesn't waive all suspense and tragic overtones in search of punchlines; one of the chief joys of this book is how well it works as a spy novel. But unlike heavier Greene works like "The Power And The Glory," "Our Man" plays in a kind of high-adventure, almost Ian Fleming kind of way. Greene's novel concerns a struggling British vacuum salesman living in Cuba, Jim Wormold, recruited by U.K. espionage to provide intelligence on the local scene as it becomes a hot spot in East-West relations. Wormold can't resist their money, but decides that instead of giving honest information, he will make up stories with the "assistance" of a stable of recruited agents he invents on the spot. "Just lie and keep your freedom," advises Wormold's best friend, an old German doctor with a mysterious background named Hasselbacher. "They don't deserve the truth...They have no money, except what they take from men like you and me." So Wormold does exactly that, for the benefit of his blossoming daughter, the flower of his heart whose faith in him and God he seeks to preserve though he doesn't share either belief. The result is a tangle of tall tales about alcoholic pilots and Mata Hari (...) he basically makes up as he goes along. At one point, he wonders whether he pushed his luck when he presents the plans for one of his vacuum cleaner models as a secret Soviet base, but he's hopelessly addicted to his fiction almost as much for the pleasure of creation as for the financial reward: "It astonished Wormold how quickly he could reply to any questions about his characters; they seemed to live on the threshold of consciousness - he had only to turn on a light and there they were, frozen in some characteristic action." Wormold is playing a dangerous game; in addition to snookering his own country, he is also attracting the notice both of the rival camp and the Havana police in the intimidating person of Captain Segura, a rumored torturer who covets Wormold's daughter. But in oddly detached fashion, perhaps because his life lost much of its purpose when his wife left him years ago, Wormold improvises his way through with cosmic aplomb. There is a deeper meaning to this book, based on Greene's belief that neither East nor West deserved any special allegiance during the Cold War. One character puts it this way: "They haven't left us much to believe, have they? Even disbelief. I can't believe in anything bigger than a home, or anything vaguer than a human being." It's possible to take issue with Greene's value-neutral attitude, but his execution is so deft, and his style so entertaining, that you can't help but admire him. "Our Man In Havana" is a thoroughly mesmerizing comedy that manages to impart some subversive truths about where the moral lines exist between serving one's government and serving one's fellow man.
Rating:
Summary: That's Great !!!!
Review: I have read this book in my school and i loved it. I'm portuguese and i got an "A" on this book analisis. Please read it. That's the best book of spionage that i have read.
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