The Comedians (novel)
The Comedians is
a novel by Graham Greene, first published in 1966. Set in Haiti under the rule of François "Papa
Doc" Duvalier and his secret police, the Tonton
Macoute, The Comedians tells the story of
a tired hotel owner, Brown, and his increasing fatalism as he watches Haiti descend
into barbarism. The story begins as three men: Brown, Smith the innocent American,
and Major H. O. Jones the confidence man meet on a ship bound for Haiti.
Brown, Smith, and Jones, their names suggesting a curious facelessness, are the
“comedians” of Greene’s title. Complications include Brown’s friendship with a
rebel leader, politically charged hotel guests, the manipulations of a British
arms dealer, and an affair with Martha Pineda, the wife of a South American ambassador.
The setting for much of the novel, the Hotel Trianon,
was inspired by the Hotel Oloffson in central Port-au-Prince.
The
reader is introduced to the main characters on board the Medea,
a Dutch ship serving Port-au-Prince and the Dominican Republic.
The narrator is Mr. Brown, who is returning from an unsuccessful trip to the United States to sell his hotel, located in Port-au-Prince. Also
present are Mr. Smith, (the Presidential Candidate), who ran on the vegetarian
ticket in the American election of 1948; he and Mrs. Smith are on an optimistic
journey to build a vegetarian center in Haiti. "Major" Jones is a
likeable person of dubious history; he is full of stories about exploits which
are not quite believable.
Duvalier's reaction
In his
Ways of Escape, Greene wrote that the book "touched him [Duvalier] on the raw". Duvalier
attacked the book in the press, and also had his Ministry of Foreign Affairs
make a brochure named "Graham Greene Demasque
Finally Exposed" whose distribution was cut when it failed to achieve the
expected result. The book called Greene, "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." ("The last epithet has always a little
puzzled me", added Greene.)
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