| Author/Contributor(s): | Greene, Graham |
| Publisher: | Viking Books |
| Date: | 01/28/1966 |
| Binding: | Paperback |
| Condition: | USED – Very good. An unmarked copy with tight binding and some moderate shelf wear. |
A novel that seamlessly weaves fiction and fact, The Comedians is a tale set in “that shabby land of terror,” the voodoo-ridden Haiti of “Papa Doc” Duvalier and the Tontons Macoute, the brutal secret police of his regime. Like its predecessor The Quiet American, The Comedians is essentially a story about the committed and the uncommitted.
The black intellectual Doctor Magiot is committed. His last letter to Brown, the interesting, self-doubting man who tells the story, is a statement and an appeal by the committed—by a man who must, by his nature, share the terrible events of his time. But the Comedians, Brown, Smith, and Jones—not bad men, certainly, and capable of heroism of a sort—have opted out. They play their parts in the foreground: they experience love affairs rather than love; they have enthusiasms but not a faith; and if they die, they die by accident. With alternating comedy, irony and grim violence, Graham Greene has created a terrain of mounting suspense and subtle significance, and has fashioned a very important novel of our times.