Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
This was my first Graham Greene book and i might be hooked on British intelligence books. Very interesting and well done as an audio- you have to hear the accent with the vocabulary!
An excellent novel of love and risk in a world of espionage, with apartheid forming the background against which the key characters make their choices, moral or otherwise.
This novel features a smaller cast and a more streamlined storyline than John Le Carre's "The Honourable Schoolboy," although some of the themes are similar.
This is very good stuff.
This novel features a smaller cast and a more streamlined storyline than John Le Carre's "The Honourable Schoolboy," although some of the themes are similar.
This is very good stuff.
The Human Factor by Graham Greene.
Maurice Castle, is a middle aged MI6 agent. He earlier was field agent in South Africa but now has a desk job. While working in South Africa, he falls in love with black woman and breaks many laws to get her to England and eventually to marry her. When leak is detected in his department he and his colleague Davis comes under scrutiny of the authorities, who want to catch the leak but also want to avoid public trial.
Narrative moves in swift manner. If you get through first 100 pages you can get through the whole of it and in end you will be glad you didn't stop. Even though it is a spy novel but it is nothing like that of 007. It shows us mundane nature of it and yet manages to keep us at the edge of our seats. It shows the vile nature of espionage. There is nothing glamorous about it. How human life and humanity in general is disposable. Even when one of their colleague is wrongfully murdered no one shows real remorse for innocent life lost.
It is difficult to review without giving spoilers. One must pick and read it to understand. There are allusions to Tolstoy, Trollope, and Browning and so. The provide sublteley in narration. Swiftness in the beginning helps to build up the plot. Subtle humour of characters lightens bleakness of the plot. Psyche of the character adds to the Human Factor in otherwise inhumane field.
Maurice Castle, is a middle aged MI6 agent. He earlier was field agent in South Africa but now has a desk job. While working in South Africa, he falls in love with black woman and breaks many laws to get her to England and eventually to marry her. When leak is detected in his department he and his colleague Davis comes under scrutiny of the authorities, who want to catch the leak but also want to avoid public trial.
Narrative moves in swift manner. If you get through first 100 pages you can get through the whole of it and in end you will be glad you didn't stop. Even though it is a spy novel but it is nothing like that of 007. It shows us mundane nature of it and yet manages to keep us at the edge of our seats. It shows the vile nature of espionage. There is nothing glamorous about it. How human life and humanity in general is disposable. Even when one of their colleague is wrongfully murdered no one shows real remorse for innocent life lost.
It is difficult to review without giving spoilers. One must pick and read it to understand. There are allusions to Tolstoy, Trollope, and Browning and so. The provide sublteley in narration. Swiftness in the beginning helps to build up the plot. Subtle humour of characters lightens bleakness of the plot. Psyche of the character adds to the Human Factor in otherwise inhumane field.
A Study in Amorality
Maurice Castle seems quite comfortably settled in his job as an office-based agent in MI6. He’s dubious about the worth of the work and sometimes considers leaving, but he’s not unhappy. He gets along well on a superficial level with his subordinate, Davis; the two of them making up the entire South African section. And his home life is good – he loves his wife, Sarah, and she him, and they both dote on Sam, Sarah’s young son from a previous relationship. But when his superiors begin to suspect that there is a leak coming from his department, this contented façade begins to crumble, and Maurice has to face up to his past…
I listened to this as an audiobook narrated by Tim Pigott-Smith, and I suspect that coloured my view of it to some degree. While the main narrative is fine, Pigott-Smith’s accents in the dialogue are not, especially Sarah who is supposed to be South African but sounds like no accent I have ever heard and is seriously irritating. So I feel I may have liked this better if I’d read rather than listened.
Maurice and Sarah met when he was stationed in South Africa as a spy in the field, and since Sarah is black, their love was forbidden under the apartheid rules then in force. So racism is one of the themes of the book – both the overt, legalised racism of apartheid, and the more subtle racism that Sarah and especially young Sam face in Britain. This expands towards Maurice too as, while mixed marriages may have been legal in Britain, they were still unusual and not well-regarded. (The book was published in 1978.)
Back in South Africa, Sarah had got into trouble with the authorities and had been helped by the Communists, and as a result Maurice felt he owed them a favour. We quickly learn that it is not Davis who is the double-agent, but Maurice. So when the MI6 investigation pins the blame on Davis, Maurice should feel guilty. He doesn’t really seem to, though – he’s so wrapped up in his own peril and that of his family that he doesn’t seem to feel anything much about the effect on poor Davis. His boss, however, new to the role, is rather shocked to discover the lengths that MI6 will go to when they suspect a traitor in their ranks. This is the major theme – the amorality at the heart of espionage, not just in Britain but among the Soviets and South Africans too, and by extension to all who pursue that shadowy profession.
There’s also a background commentary about the murky power politics going on in Africa, with Britain unwilling to break with the South African government however much they deplore apartheid, for fear that the Soviets will fill the vacuum and become the major power in the continent. The black Africans are stuck in the middle, at the mercy of these two colonial powers, with their rights ignored or trashed by both. This was all shown a bit too subtly, I felt – it may have been more obvious to a contemporary audience, but I wasn’t really clear for a long time about why the Soviets were involved in the story, or what Britain’s stance was.
There’s also a strand that takes us to Moscow, to the world of the double-agents who have become defectors, and this would have been very relevant in the era of Philby, Burgess and Maclean. Greene shows that some at least of the men who ended up as defectors weren’t really dedicated to the cause of Communism, but had drifted into becoming double-agents for a variety of reasons that weren’t very well defined even to themselves. The dreary isolation and constant supervision they face as they live out their lives in Moscow seems like almost as much of a punishment as imprisonment would have been. Without explicitly stating it, Greene also gives the impression that the secrets they were trading during the Cold War were rather unimportant anyway – that it was all an unsavoury game.
There is some humour in it, but not much. Mostly I found it a rather grey and depressing read, where people sold their souls and their countries for very little reason, and where morality and humanity were both in short supply. For the benefit of animal lovers, I shall say there is one hideous scene of horrible cruelty to a dog, which I felt was entirely unnecessary – it seemed to be there purely to show us that innocents suffer in the spying game, a point I felt had been made effectively enough with the human characters.
So not my favourite Greene, though it’s well done and gets its points over. Simply not really to my taste, and the narration didn’t help. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Maurice Castle seems quite comfortably settled in his job as an office-based agent in MI6. He’s dubious about the worth of the work and sometimes considers leaving, but he’s not unhappy. He gets along well on a superficial level with his subordinate, Davis; the two of them making up the entire South African section. And his home life is good – he loves his wife, Sarah, and she him, and they both dote on Sam, Sarah’s young son from a previous relationship. But when his superiors begin to suspect that there is a leak coming from his department, this contented façade begins to crumble, and Maurice has to face up to his past…
I listened to this as an audiobook narrated by Tim Pigott-Smith, and I suspect that coloured my view of it to some degree. While the main narrative is fine, Pigott-Smith’s accents in the dialogue are not, especially Sarah who is supposed to be South African but sounds like no accent I have ever heard and is seriously irritating. So I feel I may have liked this better if I’d read rather than listened.
Maurice and Sarah met when he was stationed in South Africa as a spy in the field, and since Sarah is black, their love was forbidden under the apartheid rules then in force. So racism is one of the themes of the book – both the overt, legalised racism of apartheid, and the more subtle racism that Sarah and especially young Sam face in Britain. This expands towards Maurice too as, while mixed marriages may have been legal in Britain, they were still unusual and not well-regarded. (The book was published in 1978.)
Back in South Africa, Sarah had got into trouble with the authorities and had been helped by the Communists, and as a result Maurice felt he owed them a favour. We quickly learn that it is not Davis who is the double-agent, but Maurice. So when the MI6 investigation pins the blame on Davis, Maurice should feel guilty. He doesn’t really seem to, though – he’s so wrapped up in his own peril and that of his family that he doesn’t seem to feel anything much about the effect on poor Davis. His boss, however, new to the role, is rather shocked to discover the lengths that MI6 will go to when they suspect a traitor in their ranks. This is the major theme – the amorality at the heart of espionage, not just in Britain but among the Soviets and South Africans too, and by extension to all who pursue that shadowy profession.
There’s also a background commentary about the murky power politics going on in Africa, with Britain unwilling to break with the South African government however much they deplore apartheid, for fear that the Soviets will fill the vacuum and become the major power in the continent. The black Africans are stuck in the middle, at the mercy of these two colonial powers, with their rights ignored or trashed by both. This was all shown a bit too subtly, I felt – it may have been more obvious to a contemporary audience, but I wasn’t really clear for a long time about why the Soviets were involved in the story, or what Britain’s stance was.
There’s also a strand that takes us to Moscow, to the world of the double-agents who have become defectors, and this would have been very relevant in the era of Philby, Burgess and Maclean. Greene shows that some at least of the men who ended up as defectors weren’t really dedicated to the cause of Communism, but had drifted into becoming double-agents for a variety of reasons that weren’t very well defined even to themselves. The dreary isolation and constant supervision they face as they live out their lives in Moscow seems like almost as much of a punishment as imprisonment would have been. Without explicitly stating it, Greene also gives the impression that the secrets they were trading during the Cold War were rather unimportant anyway – that it was all an unsavoury game.
There is some humour in it, but not much. Mostly I found it a rather grey and depressing read, where people sold their souls and their countries for very little reason, and where morality and humanity were both in short supply. For the benefit of animal lovers, I shall say there is one hideous scene of horrible cruelty to a dog, which I felt was entirely unnecessary – it seemed to be there purely to show us that innocents suffer in the spying game, a point I felt had been made effectively enough with the human characters.
So not my favourite Greene, though it’s well done and gets its points over. Simply not really to my taste, and the narration didn’t help. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
A useful corrective during the DNC in Chicago, Greene's title reminds us what is at stake in politics and its shadow corollary, espionage. As pols unironically chant, "We're not going back," this novel reminds us that when we think about people in groups rather than as individuals, we always get it wrong.
Not quite a fan of spy-stories, this one is rather different, since you always know who´s who, on what side etc.
The characters and their conversations are beautiful worked out and Greenes language is calm and serene almost to the end where you get the fingernail-biting part. Recommendable!
The characters and their conversations are beautiful worked out and Greenes language is calm and serene almost to the end where you get the fingernail-biting part. Recommendable!
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I have read a few Graham Greene novels and this is my second favourite of his, I thought Brighton Rock is much better but this was a good story and informative. Nice intrigue with a political and social plot about the Cold War and Apartheid. A mix of characters, not all nice, but well written and important to the storyline.
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
In the words of my son: “He never misses.”