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Loading... The Comedians (1966)by Graham Greene
 kaulsu | May 3, 2013 |  Rereading a number of Greene novels has made me more aware of some of the constants in his work: cruelty both political and personal, the complexity of innocence, the tangle of emotions and relationships Greene always associates with love. Maybe not his best novel but well worth reading. (  ) nmele | Apr 6, 2013 | סיפורה הנורא של טהיטי תחת פפה דוק דובליה. הטוב בספ (  ) amoskovacs | Feb 5, 2012 | I have read many Graham Greene novels and he is one of my favorite authors, but this book did not do much for me. The story is thin and predictable and although the story is set in Haiti, there is actually very little that goes on that seems unique to the island. (  ) markfinl | Oct 16, 2011 | Another solid Greene outing. Of his South America novels, I probably liked "Our Man in Havana" better, though that was more of a 'comedy' than this despite the title. As usual, great characters, and a great job of placing us in fear of Papa Doc without ever meeting him. (  ) BooksForDinner | Oct 3, 2011 |
First published nearly 40 years ago, Greene's novel about a world-weary hotelier in the darkest days of the Duvalier dictatorship was inevitably banned in the country. It would be comforting to read it now as a historical record of a different era but sadly the night in Haiti has deepened further and if Greene were to return he would find no shortage of the corruption and violence that acted as a backdrop to The Comedians. Most of all, God is a failure. God is like the British army: He loses almost every battle, and only at the end, if repentance comes in time, may He win the war. For most of the time, Evil wins, turning good intentions to bad ends and bringing all to ruin. I think we should remember that the God who created Greeneland has been more than seven days in doing it, and has not yet rested. He is Mr. Greene himself. And if the land itself might be a miserable enough place in which to live, the God who creates it does so with so much liveliness and skill, and with such a will and ability to please and carry us along, that for those of us who are merely tourists and not the doomed inhabitants it is an exciting land to visit.
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Wikipedia in English (3)
Haiti is a difficult world to explain to ordinary folk. It is difficult, first of all, to explain that the Haitian people can be so wonderful yet be oppressed by such terrible dictators time and again. Is it the fault of America, as Greene suggests? It certainly is true that America saw so many communist bogey men in the bushes it failed to recognize to TonTon Macoutes as being more detrimental to the health and well-being of the "tired and poor, yearning to be free" than any Castro. And WAS Papa Doc that bad? No, he was worse even than that.
Are there men and women alive today that see to the heart of goodness, as the Smiths did? It certainly is difficult to juxtapose the two: Smith and Duvalier. The absolute is difficult to swallow, yet there do exist absolutely good people. As there also exists absolutely evil ones. This book is peopled with both of them, yet one cannot/should not forget that it is also peopled with the rank and file, the company troupe, as it were, of actors, who learn their lines and continue to repeat them, never learning from a new script. The comedians. (