rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    title: Our man down in Havana
    sub title: the story behind Graham Greene's Cold War spy novel
  name:
    name part: Hull, Christopher
    name part: 1965-
    role:
      role term: creator
    role:
      role term: author.
  type of resource: text
  genre: bibliography
  genre: biography
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: nyu
    date issued: 2019
    copyright date: 2019
    edition: First Pegasus Books hardcover edition.
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  physical description:
    form: print
    extent: 338 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates (some color) : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.
  abstract: Exploring the backstory that led to the writing of Graham Greene's beloved satirical spy novel, Our Man Down in Havana evokes this pivotal time and place in the author's life. When U.S. immigration authorities deported Graham Greene from Puerto Rico in 1954, the British author made an unplanned visit to Havana and discovered that "every vice was permissible and every trade possible" in a Caribbean fleshpot of mafia-run casinos and nude revues. The former MI6 officer had stumbled upon the ideal setting for a comic espionage story. Three years later, he returned in the midst of Fidel Castro's guerrilla insurgency against a U.S.-backed dictator to begin writing his iconic novel Our Man in Havana. Twelve weeks after its publication, the Cuban Revolution triumphed in January 1959, soon transforming a capitalist playground into a communist stronghold. Combining biography, history and politics, Our Man Down in Havana investigates the real story behind Greene's fictional one. This includes his many visits to a pleasure island that became a revolutionary island, turning his chance involvement into a political commitment. His Cuban novel describes an amateur agent who dupes his intelligence chiefs with invented reports about "concrete platforms and unidentifiable pieces of giant machinery." With eerie prescience, Greene's satirical tale had foretold the Cold War's most perilous episode, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
  table of contents: Introduction -- A writing life -- Part 1. Before the Cuban Revolution. Brother, sister, brother, spy -- Cold War settings -- Havana Vice -- Down in Havana -- Our arms in Havana -- Part 2. After the Cuban Revolution. Shooting "Our man in Havana" -- Reality imitates fiction -- "Return to Cuba" -- "Shadow and sunlight in Cuba": finally meeting Fidel -- From Havana with love -- Conclusion.
  note: Christopher Hull.
  note: Includes bibliographical references and index.
  subject:
    geographic code: nwcu---
    geographic code: n-us---
  subject:
    name:
      name part: Greene, Graham
      name part: 1904-1991
  subject:
    name:
      name part: Greene, Graham
      name part: 1904-1991
    topic: Travel
    geographic: Cuba
  subject:
    topic: Espionage
    geographic: Cuba
    topic: History
    temporal: 20th century
  subject:
    topic: Cold War
  subject:
    geographic: Cuba
    topic: Politics and government
    temporal: 1933-1959
  subject:
    geographic: Cuba
    topic: Politics and government
    temporal: 1959-1990
  subject:
    geographic: Cuba
    topic: Foreign relations
    temporal: 20th century
  subject:
    topic: Spy stories, American
    topic: History and criticism
  subject:
    topic: Espionage in literature
  subject:
    geographic: Cuba
    topic: In literature
  classification: 823.912
  identifier: 9781643130187
  identifier: 1643130188
  record info:
    record content source: YDX
    record creation date: 190115
    record change date: 20190718162954.0
    record identifier: in00004059049