A review by paul_cornelius
The Comedians by Graham Greene

5.0

To my surprise, I am always taken with this novel. Every time I read it. I say to my surprise, because the setting, Papa Doc Duvalier's Haiti is so repellent. But Graham Greene has a way with hot, humid tropical climates. He somehow brings the fever of those places directly to the reader, whether it be Havana on the eve of Castro's takeover, Vietnam during the first decade of the War in Indochina in the 1950s, Paraguay, or the tropical sweat of Jalisco, Mexico. These novels and places have more character and seduction to them than do British/European locales. It is as if the heat boils away the mask his protagonists try to hide under and leaves them naked and open for our understanding, if not our sympathy. That is the case with The Comedians, too. A novel about escaping Duvalier's hellish tropical murder house for sanity but perhaps not redemption.