What follows is a hilarious story of a man who has bitten off more than he can chew! He has no idea what a spy should be doing, and so invents both subagents and reports of covert activities. As well, his daughter Milly has just purchased a horse and along with a number of other expenses he is compelled to ‘accept’ the position. It seems Wormold has been given no choice in the matter, however. 'It always seemed strange to Wormold that he continued to exist for others when he was not there.'

When he is approached by British Intelligence agent Hawthorne to serve as an undercover agent within Cuba, he initially thinks there must be some mistake! What on earth could they want with an ordinary, humble man like himself to serve his home country? With sales down and a beautiful and manipulative teenage daughter to maintain, Wormold is in need of some easy cash. After all, this novel takes place in Cuba during the Cold War but prior to the Cuban missile crisis. If there was an award for most unlikely to succeed as a spy, Englishman James Wormold would definitely be in the running! You see, he is a vacuum salesman, whose latest machine, the ‘Atomic Pile Cleaner’, is not selling well due to its unfortunate name. We must have our man in Havana, you know. Respected member of the European Traders’ Association. Maybe he didn't write enough 'entertainments'. Read him lately? Ever even heard his name? Yeah, I didn't think so. Speaking of, in 1967, who won the Nobel Prize for literature? Miguel Angel Asturias. That, and having readability, over 50 years after the fact. He does that, yes (and so well) but he can also make me laugh! I wonder sometimes if that - humour - is the most challenging thing of all. He doesn't just wax on about his love/hate relationship with God. In fact, it shows me that he's not a one trick pony. It doesn't in the least bit diminish my respect for the brilliant Mr. It's sophisticated and clever and tremendous fun. No one is more poorly suited to this job than Wormold, and his passivity, his lack of creativity, lead him into a whole mess of trouble. So when an agent from MI6 approaches him to do his duty as an Englishman, he finds himself in the world of spies and agents and secret codes and. He's in a perpetual state of bewilderment, an innocent in a life that happens to him. Our 'hero' is a man named Wormold (say no more), a vacuum cleaner salesman who's been left by his wife to raise his manipulative and haughtily Catholic daughter all on his own. The tone of this book is not serious, it's comedic.

Our Man in Havana is one such entertainment, which means it won't have you sobbing into the creases of your book like you might do in The End of the Affair, or swooning over incredibly insightful sentences describing human failings and observations. They snubbed their nose at Graham Greene because apparently he wrote too many 'entertainments'. The 1967 Nobel Prize committee for literature didn't know what they were doing.

Our man in havana book review