Our Man in Havana

Our Man in Havana
Author: Graham Greene
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2018-04-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1504052536

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A hapless salesman in Cuba is recruited into Cold War spy games in Greene’s classic “comical, satirical, atmospherical” novel (The Daily Telegraph). James Wormold, a cash-strapped vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana, finds the answer to his prayers when British Intelligence offers him a lucrative job as an undercover agent. To keep the checks coming, Wormold must at least pretend to know what he’s doing. Soon, he’s apparently deciphering incomprehensible codes, passing along sketches of secret weapons that look suspiciously like vacuum parts, and claiming to recruit fellow operatives from his country club, all to create the perfect picture of intrigue. But when MI6 dispatches a secretary to oversee his endeavors, Wormold fears his carelessly fabricated world will come undone. Instead, it all comes true. Somehow, he’s become the target of an assassin, and it’s going to take more than a fib to get out of Cuba alive. Her Majesty’s man in Havana may have to resort to spying. Named one of the 20 Best Spy Novels of All Time by the Telegraph and adapted into the classic 1959 comedy starring Alec Guinness, Our Man in Havana is “high-comic mayhem . . . weirdly undated . . . [and] bizarrely prescient” (Christopher Buckley, New York Times–bestselling author).

Our Man Down in Havana

Our Man Down in Havana
Author: Christopher Hull
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2019-03-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 164313101X

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When U.S. immigration authorities deported Graham Greene from Puerto Rico in 1954, the British author made an unplanned visit to Havana and the former MI6 officer had stumbled upon the ideal setting for a comic espionage story. Three years later, he returned in the midst of Castro’s guerrilla insurgency against a U.S.-backed dictator to begin writing his iconic novel Our Man in Havana. Twelve weeks after its publication, in January 1959, the Cuban Revolution triumphed, soon transforming a capitalist playground into a communist stronghold.Combining biography, history, politics, and a measure of psychoanalysis, Our Man Down in Havana investigates the real story behind Greene’s fiction. It includes his many visits to a pleasure island that became a revolutionary island, turning his chance involvement into a political commitment. His Cuban novel describes an amateur agent who dupes his intelligence chiefs with invented reports about “concrete platforms and unidentifiable pieces of giant machinery.” With eerie prescience, Greene’s satirical tale had foretold the Cold War’s most perilous episode, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Our Woman in Havana

Our Woman in Havana
Author: Sarah Rainsford
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2018-09-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786074001

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Graham Greene saw the Castros rise; Sarah Rainsford watched them leave. From the street where Wormold, the hapless hero of Greene’s Our Man in Havana, plied his trade, BBC foreign correspondent Rainsford reports on Fidel’s reshaping of a nation, and what the future holds for ordinary Cubans now that he and his brother Raul are no longer in power. Through tales of literary ghosts and forgotten reporters, believers in the revolution and dissidents, entrepreneurs optimistic about the new Cuba and the disillusioned still looking for a way out, Our Woman in Havana paints an enthralling picture of this enigmatic country as it enters a new era.

Hitler's Man in Havana

Hitler's Man in Havana
Author: Thomas Schoonover
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2008-09-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813173027

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When Heinz Lüning posed as a Jewish refugee to spy for Hitler’s Abwehr espionage agency, he thought he had discovered the perfect solution to his most pressing problem: how to avoid being drafted into Hitler’s army. Lüning was unsympathetic to Fascist ideology, but the Nazis’ tight control over exit visas gave him no chance to escape Germany. He could enter Hitler’s army either as a soldier . . . or a spy. In 1941, he entered the Abwehr academy for spy training and was given the code name “Lumann.” Soon after, Lüning began the service in Cuba that led to his ultimate fate of being the only German spy executed in Latin America during World War II. Lüning was not the only spy operating in Cuba at the time. Various Allied spies labored in Havana; the FBI controlled eighteen Special Intelligence Service operatives, and the British counterintelligence section subchief Graham Greene supervised Secret Intelligence Service agents; and Ernest Hemingway’s private agents supplied inflated and inaccurate information about submarines and spies to the U.S. ambassador, Spruille Braden. Lüning stumbled into this milieu of heightened suspicion and intrigue. Poorly trained and awkward at his work, he gathered little information worth reporting, was unable to build a working radio and improperly mixed the formulas for his secret inks. Lüning eventually was discovered by British postal censors and unwittingly provided the inspiration for Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana. In chronicling Lüning’s unlikely trajectory from a troubled life in Germany to a Caribbean firing squad, Thomas D. Schoonover makes brilliant use of untapped documentary sources to reveal the workings of the famed Abwehr and the technical and social aspects of Lüning’s spycraft. Using archival sources from three continents, Schoonover offers a narrative rich in atmospheric details to reveal the political upheavals of the time, not only tracking Lüning’s activities but also explaining the broader trends in the region and in local counterespionage. Schoonover argues that ambitious Cuban and U.S. officials turned Lüning’s capture into a grand victory. For at least five months after Lüning’s arrest, U.S. and Cuban leaders—J. Edgar Hoover, Fulgencio Batista, Nelson Rockefeller, General Manuel Benítez, Ambassador Spruille Braden, and others—treated Lüning as a dangerous, key figure for a Nazi espionage network in the Gulf-Caribbean. They reworked his image from low-level bumbler to master spy, using his capture for their own political gain. In the sixty years since Lüning’s execution, very little has been written about Nazi espionage in Latin America, partly due to the reticence of the U.S. government. Revealing these new historical sources for the first time, Schoonover tells a gripping story of Lüning’s life and capture, suggesting that Lüning was everyone’s man in Havana but his own.

Waiting For Snow In Havana

Waiting For Snow In Havana
Author: Carlos Eire
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 579
Release: 2012-12-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 147110835X

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A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous and cruel, like any other-but with certain differences. The neighbour's monkey was liable to escape and run across your roof. Surfing was conducted by driving cars across the breakwater. Lizards and firecrackers made frequent contact. Carlos Eire's childhood was a little different from most. His father was convinced he had been Louis XVI in a past life. At school, classmates with fathers in the Batista government were attended by chauffeurs and bodyguards. At a home crammed with artifacts and paintings, portraits of Jesus spoke to him in dreams and nightmares. Then, in January 1959, the world changes: Batista is suddenly gone, a cigar-smoking guerrilla has taken his place, and Christmas is cancelled. The echo of firing squads is everywhere. And, one by one, the author's schoolmates begin to disappear-spirited away to the United States. Carlos will end up there himself, without his parents, never to see his father again. Narrated with the urgency of a confession, WAITING FOR SNOW IN HAVANA is both an ode to a paradise lost and an exorcism. More than that, it captures the terrible beauty of those times in our lives when we are certain we have died-and then are somehow, miraculously, reborn.

Next Year in Havana

Next Year in Havana
Author: Chanel Cleeton
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2021-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593337204

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A HELLO SUNSHINE x REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK "A beautiful novel that's full of forbidden passions, family secrets and a lot of courage and sacrifice."--Reese Witherspoon After the death of her beloved grandmother, a Cuban-American woman travels to Havana, where she discovers the roots of her identity--and unearths a family secret hidden since the revolution... Havana, 1958. The daughter of a sugar baron, nineteen-year-old Elisa Perez is part of Cuba's high society, where she is largely sheltered from the country's growing political unrest--until she embarks on a clandestine affair with a passionate revolutionary... Miami, 2017. Freelance writer Marisol Ferrera grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother Elisa, who was forced to flee with her family during the revolution. Elisa's last wish was for Marisol to scatter her ashes in the country of her birth. Arriving in Havana, Marisol comes face-to-face with the contrast of Cuba's tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. When more family history comes to light and Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she'll need the lessons of her grandmother's past to help her understand the true meaning of courage.

Ashenden

Ashenden
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2023-01-01T20:46:22Z
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

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During World War I W. Somerset Maugham, already by then an established playwright and author, was recruited to be a British intelligence agent. These stories reflect his wartime experiences in intelligence gathering. Though fictionalized, they managed to retain enough authentic elements for Winston Churchill to advise Maugham that their publication might be a violation of the Official Secrets Act, resulting in the author burning an additional 14 stories. Set in various locales across the continent, these remaining Ashenden stories are a precursor to the jet-setting spy novels of the 1950s and 1960s. Maugham is known as a master short story writer and these stories are no exception, combining wit and realism to create memorable characters in a unique and highly critical portrait of wartime espionage. Initially released to a mixed reception—with an early review by D. H. Lawrence being especially scathing—Ashenden has since been credited as an inspiration for numerous authors, including John Le Carré, Graham Greene, and Raymond Chandler. The latter in particular was especially impressed, writing in 1950, “There are no other great spy stories—none at all. I have been searching and I know.” This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

Our Woman in Havana

Our Woman in Havana
Author: Vicki Huddleston
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2018-03-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1468315803

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A top US diplomat’s compelling memoir of her years in Cuba and the tumultuous relationship between the two countries: “Unparalleled insight.” —Culture Trip After the US embassy in Havana was closed in 1961, relations between the countries broke off. A thaw came in 1977 with the opening of a de facto embassy in Havana, the US Interests Section—where Vicki Huddleston would later serve under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush. In her memoir of a diplomat at work, she tells gripping stories of face-to-face encounters with Fidel Castro and the initiatives she undertook, like the transistor radios she furnished to ordinary Cubans. Along with inside accounts of dramatic episodes such as the Elián González custody battle, Huddleston also evokes the charm of the island country and her warm affection for the Cuban people. Uniquely qualified to explain the inner workings of US-Cuba relations, Huddleston examines the Obama administration’s diplomatic opening of 2014, the mysterious “sonic” brain and hearing injuries suffered by US and Canadian diplomats serving in Havana, and the rescinding of the diplomatic opening under the Trump administration. She recounts missed opportunities for détente, and the myths, misconceptions, and lies that have long pervaded US-Cuba relations. Our Woman in Havana is essential reading for everyone interested in Cuba, including the thousands of Americans visiting the island every year, as well as policymakers and observers who study the stormy relationship with our near neighbor. “Anyone interested in the nitty-gritty of policy-making in Washington, and any young foreign service officer intrigued by worldly adventures will thoroughly enjoy.” —Ambassador Joseph Wilson, author of The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity

The Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene

The Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene
Author: Richard Greene
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 624
Release: 2021-01-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 039365107X

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A Finalist for the 2022 Edgar Award A Washington Post Best Nonfiction Book of the Year A vivid, deeply researched account of the tumultuous life of one of the twentieth century’s greatest novelists, the author of The End of the Affair. One of the most celebrated British writers of his generation, Graham Greene’s own story was as strange and compelling as those he told of Pinkie the Mobster, Harry Lime, or the Whisky Priest. A journalist and MI6 officer, Greene sought out the inner narratives of war and politics across the world; he witnessed the Second World War, the Vietnam War, the Mau Mau Rebellion, the rise of Fidel Castro, and the guerrilla wars of Central America. His classic novels, including The Heart of the Matter and The Quiet American, are only pieces of a career that reads like a primer on the twentieth century itself. The Unquiet Englishman braids the narratives of Greene’s extraordinary life. It portrays a man who was traumatized as an adolescent and later suffered a mental illness that brought him to the point of suicide on several occasions; it tells the story of a restless traveler and unfailing advocate for human rights exploring troubled places around the world, a man who struggled to believe in God and yet found himself described as a great Catholic writer; it reveals a private life in which love almost always ended in ruin, alongside a larger story of politicians, battlefields, and spies. Above all, The Unquiet Englishman shows us a brilliant novelist mastering his craft. A work of wit, insight, and compassion, this new biography of Graham Greene, the first undertaken in a generation, responds to the many thousands of pages of letters that have recently come to light and to new memoirs by those who knew him best. It deals sensitively with questions of private life, sex, and mental illness, and sheds new light on one of the foremost modern writers.

The Mandelbaum Gate

The Mandelbaum Gate
Author: Muriel Spark
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2012-03-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1453245057

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DIVDIVFor Barbara Vaughn, a checkpoint between Jordan and the newly formed Israel is the threshold to painful self-discovery/divDIV /divDIV/divDIVBarbara Vaughn is a scholarly woman whose fascination with religion stems partly from a conversion to Catholicism, and partly from her own half-Jewish background. When her boyfriend joins an archaeological excursion to search for additional Dead Sea Scrolls, Vaughn takes the opportunity to explore the Holy Land. But this is 1960, and with the nation of Israel still in its infancy, the British Empire in retreat from the region, and the Eichmann trials in full swing, Vaughn uncovers much deeper mysteries than those found at tourist sites. /divDIV /divDIVBoth an espionage thriller and a journey of faith, The Mandelbaum Gate won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize upon its publication, and is one of Spark’s most compelling novels./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Muriel Spark including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s archive at the National Library of Scotland./divDIV /divDIV/div/div