Always lovely writing, with memorable descriptions of Haiti's landscape and climate, some very amusing people, and arresting passages about the nature of life, such as this one voiced by the true sage of the story, the Haitian doctor, Dr. Instead the protagonist, Brown, faces the end of his life as a perpetual expatriot whose ideals, if he indeed ever had any, have been completely shattered by the takeover of Haiti by Papa Doc and the Tonton Macoute. "This short novel is not concerned with spiritual struggle as much of Greene's work. With alternating comedy, irony, and grim violence, Greene weaves these lives in a pattern of mounting suspense. Hiding behind their actors’ masks, they hesitate on the edge of life, afraid of love, pain, and fear itself. They play their parts, respectable or shady, in the foreground, experiencing love affairs rather than love, enthusiasms but not a faith, and meaningless accidental deaths. Brown is a disenchanted English hotel owner the Smiths are an American couple on a good-will mission Martha is the young wife of a Latin American diplomat Jones is an engaging fool. Disillusioned and noncommittal, they are the “comedians” of Greene’s title. Three men meet on a ship bound for Haiti, where corruption and terror reign under the dictatorship of Papa Doc and the Tontons Macoute, his sinister secret police.
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