our man in havana [greene]

This was the third Greene novel I read in 2017. I read Our Man in Havana in Havana itself, hidden away in a windowless room on the edge of Havana Vieja, a block away from the Malecon. The Havana Greene describes is pre-revolutionary, although there were rebels in the hills and there’s an unspoken pressure on civil society, which is represented by the figure of the Mephistophelean police chief Captain Segura, who apparently has a cigarette case made out of human skin. Segura is, nevertheless, one of the less malicious antagonists the protagonist, Jim Wormwold faces. He’s a sly, intelligent man, whose evil traits are rooted in an understanding that within Cuban society, there’s no room for sentiment. And it feels as though Greene traces an echo of this in the way that British society functions. Wormwold is singled out as a suitable candidate to represent the British Secret Services in Havana, no matter the personal consequences for him or his family. His task is to stay alive and do his best not to cause too many needless deaths. 

There’s a lightness to the tone of Our Man… which makes it a breezy, amusing read. Greene sends up the British security services, with Wormwold an admirable anti-Bond, a little man who runs a vacuum cleaner shop, whose main preoccupation is keeping his teenage daughter happy. The novel is at once a portrayal of Cuban life, seen through the eyes of an ex-pat, and a critique of Britain’s post-imperial ambitions as it seeks to punch above its weight. Wormwold’s fleecing of the civil service he has been seconded to is admirable. It’s fascinating to see the way in which brand Bond has become a kind of flagship for Britain over the course of the past fifty years; a cruel, unthinking kind of Britishness which has its flair but is ultimately pretentious nonsense. Whereas Greene’s protagonist is a homespun anti-hero in the tradition of Jerome K Jerome or Sterne. 

As for the portrayal of Havana: the streets Wormwood treads and the bars he visits are still there, still recognisable in their Caribbean chaos, although he might well be saddened by the degree to which the city has fallen into decline, following nigh on 60 years of the US blockade. The wealth that once encouraged foreigners to set up shop and sell vacuum cleaners has long gone.

Potential site of Jim Wormwold's Shop/ Home in Calle Lamparilla, Havana