Our Man In Havana Greene, Graham Literature

8vo. A handsome 1958 1st Edition of this classic work mocking the 'Intelligence' industry and anticipating the Cuban Missile Crisis. "Greene joined MI6 in August 1941. In London, Greene had been appointed to the subsection dealing with counter-espionage in the Iberian Peninsula, where he had learnt about German agents in Portugal sending the Germans fictitious reports, which garnered them expenses and bonuses to add to their basic salary. "One of the agents was "Garbo", a Spanish double agent in Lisbon, who gave his German handlers disinformation, by pretending to control a ring of agents all over England. In fact, he invented armed forces movements and operations from maps, guides and standard military references. Garbo was the main inspiration for Wormold, the protagonist of Our Man in Havana. "Remembering the German agents in Portugal, Greene wrote the first version of the story in 1946, as an outline for a film script, with the story set in Estonia in 1938. The film was never made, and Greene soon realized that Havana, which he had visited several times in the early 1950s, would be a much better setting, with the absurdities of the Cold War being more appropriate for a comedy." - wiki Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Blue cloth. Square tight binding. Clean interior. Mild rubbing and edge wear to binding. Dust jacket with mild age toning and light soiling. Presents handsomely in archival mylar.