My favorite Greene novel; I love the ensemble of people (with everyday names like Brown, Smith and Jones) he throws together in a strange country. There are not many scenes as moving as the final one with Brown and Major Jones. Haiti's ruler Papa Doc Duvalier, whose politics are everything but praised in this novel, tried everything to attack Graham Greene, calling him (in a brochure) 'a liar, a cretin, a stool-pigeon... unbalanced, sadistic, perverted... a perfect ignoramus... lying to his heart's content... the shame of proud and noble England... a spy... a drug addict... a torturer.' ( )

Very dense writing;; depressing story told as some Americans pass through the hell of Papa Doc's Haiti while a few actually try to change (help) the country. ( )

Fiction, Thriller, Suspense, Haiti, Three apathic and unheroic men against François "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his secret police, the Tonton Macoute, First edition: London, The Bodley Head, 1966, 8vo, 313 pp., hardcover; New York, Viking Kestrel, 1966, 8vo, 309 pp., hardcover, Graham Grene wrote also the screenplay for the homonymous film, 1967, directed by Peter Glenville, with Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Ustinov, Richard Burton, Alec Guinness, Paul Ford, Gloria Foster, Lillian Gish, Georg Stanford Brown ( )

Feels a lot like Hemingway, but I really can't compare him to anyone I've read yet. Compelling sense of place. Gives a feeling of being jaded. Having "lived" and there is no returning to that. Hope for better times but knowledge that things will not be the same as before bad things happened. ( )

Chilling story of personal commitment set in Papa Doc's Haiti; comedians vs. the committed ( )