Description
8vo, V parts, 273pp. Hard cover in original publisher’s blue cloth boards in excellent condition with the original non price-clipped d/w (designed by Donald Green) also in very good condition with minor chipping to edges,minor wear to spine edges and slight brown discolouration to internal d/w upper edges and upper rear also. Tightly bound with a very firm spine, now protected in clear archival covering, text in excellent condition also, devoid of foxing and prior owner notations with only normal age toning of all pages. An overall superb copy (near fine) of this famous satirical black comedy set in Havana, Cuba.. The novel draws on Greene’s own experience within M16 and when U.S. immigration deported him from Pueto Rico in 1954, he made an unplanned visit to Havana and discovered that “every vice was permissable and every trade possible” in a Caribbean fleshpot of mafia-run casinos and nude revues. He had stumbled upon an ideal setting for a comic espionage story. Three years later he returned in the middle of Fidel Castro’s guerilla insurgency against a US backed dictator to begin writing this iconic novel Twelve weeks post publication the Cuban Revolution succeeded in January 1959. It has been adapted into a film, a play and opera too.. Basically it is poking fun at the British Intelligence Service and their willingness to believe local informants.