Our Man in Havana

A vacuum cleaner salesman becomes a spy by accident and a liar by design. Jim Wormold lives quietly in pre-revolutionary Havana, selling vacuum cleaners to customers who can scarcely afford them. When a British intelligence officer offers him money to report on local activity, Wormold agrees. His daughter’s expenses demand it. Lacking real information, he invents it. Diagrams of military installations are drawn from appliance parts. Agents are imagined. Reports are filed. London believes every word. What begins as improvisation gathers consequence. As his fabrications circulate through intelligence channels, other parties begin to act on them. In a city already thick with tension, fiction proves capable of generating its own danger. Greene’s espionage novel balances satire with unease, exposing how easily authority can be deceived and how quickly deception can turn fatal. ‘British Intelligence being sent up something rotten’ Daily Telegraph