Product Description

Three men meet on a ship bound for Haiti, a world in the grip of the corrupt 'Papa Doc' and the Tontons Macoute, his sinister secret police. Brown the hotelier, Smith the innocent American and Jones the confidence man - these are the 'comedians' of Graham Greene's title. Hiding behind their actors' masks, they hesitate on the edge of life. And, to begin with, they are men afraid of love, afraid of pain, afraid of fear itself...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25956 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From the Publisher
CENTENARY EDITION WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY PAUL THEROUX

About the Author
Graham Greene was born in Hertfordshire in 1904. While at Balliol College, Oxford he published his first book of verse. He continued to write throughout his lifetime, and served with the Secret Intelligence Service during the Second World War. He was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour. Among the many people who paid tribute to him on his death was Kingsley Amis: 'He will be missed all over the world. Until today, he was our greatest living novelist.' He died in 1991.

Customer Reviews

And Graham didn't like it!
This apparently, was not a good novel in the opinion of... Graham Greene. I am ashamed to say, it was the first GG novel I had read, and I absolutely loved it. Set in the nightmarish world of Papa Doc and the Tontons Macoute in Haiti in the 60s, it has an almost deliciously depressing appeal just in its writing style. It's not too heavy on facts , but you realise GG knew the place, and it'll come as no surprise that many characters were based on real people. I was SO upset when I finished this. Immediately after I read Half of a Yellow Sun, by a 'modern master' - It was pale, lame and boring in comparison to this book.

Comedy and tragedy in the dark night of Haiti
Three men meet on the Medea, a ship sailing from Philadelphia to Haiti, a country then in the grip of the corrupt Doctor Duvalier - Papa Doc - and his sinister secret police, the Tontons Macoute.
Brown is a sixty-year old owner of the hotel Trianon in Port-au-Prince which he inherited from his mother. The place used to swarm with guests, there used to be cocktails and music but now with the Duvalier regime, hardly any tourists come to Haiti. He is a man without roots and often disillusioned because he has lost the capacity to be concerned, Yet subsequent events in the novel show that he is a man who can get involved if the situation requires him to do so, even at the expense of his own safety. In this sense he is a true humanist.
Mr and Mrs Smith are an American couple travelling to Haiti to open a centre of vegetarian cooking in Port-au-Prince. The reality they are about to discover is bound to disappoint them bitterly. These two characters show that a passionate belief in the integrity of the world may not be a simple flaw in character.
And then there is Mr Jones the confidence man whom everyone likes because he can make people laugh despite the fact that little of what he claims can be taken seriously.
These are the comedians in Mr Greene's novel. As the narrator states at one point: as long as we pretend, we escape. The atrocious dictatorship of Papa Doc is vividly portrayed and looking back it seems hardly believable that such an appalling personage was once viewed as a safeguard against communism in Haiti by Washington. The darkness and the terror of the curfew, the telephones that don't work, the Tontons Macoute in their dark glasses, the violence, injustice, torture and poverty, everything is sharply described by the author. And yet despite all the pain there is always time for love and laughter.
This book has been published as an audiobook by the BBC and is read in a superb way by the comedian Tim Pigott-Smith.

A masterpiece
I first read "The Comedians" around thirty years ago and then again around twenty years ago. Remembering how much I enjoyed and admired the novel I have just finished re-reading it and have now sadly closed the book.

It is an extremely satisfying novel written by one of the finest novelists of the 20th century.

The three main characters are the men, Brown, Smith (with the feisty Mrs. Smith) and Jones who meet as strangers on board the cargo-ship "Medea" bound from New York to Haiti where their paths cross and re-cross.

Brown, the main character, is a rootless hotelier with a shady past and without faith or hope.

Smith is a one-time American Presidential Candidate on an evangelic crusade to establish a vegetarian centre.

Jones is a mystery at first, a liar certainly, a con man perhaps, who falls in and out with the regime but eventually finds some redemption.

Set in the era of Papa Doc Duvalier's misrule with his sinister Tonton Macoute secret police the novel captures the atmosphere of a nation failed by it's corrupt leaders with a people living in fear and oppression.

But this story is not about Haiti, it is about failed romance, disillusionment, cynicism but with some hope and redemption (but not for all).

The introduction by Paul Theroux is a spoiler - he unravels and lays bare the plot and it is his opinion that this is "not one of Greenes best" and a "tepid novel" - whatever that means. I strongly advise readers to read Theroux's introduction AFTER the book and make their own minds up.

I believe this to be one of Greenes finest novels that even thirty years on from our first meeting was immensely pleasurable to read and one I highly recommend.