The Comedians (1966)

Durante la dictadura Duvalier en Tahití, un excandidato a la presidencia de Estados Unidos y el propietario de un destartalado hotel que mantiene relaciones con la esposa del embajador coinciden y traban amistad. El hallazgo de un cadáver en el hotel desencadena una serie de acontecimientos que ponen de manifiesto el enloquecido ambiente que reina en la isla caribeña y, al mismo tiempo, obliga a cada uno de los personajes a mostrarse como son en realidad. Además de exponer de un modo especialmente sobrecogedor e intenso algunas de las mayores preocupaciones de Greene y de ser una de sus novelas más violentas, Los comediantes ha pasado a la historia como la gran novela sobre el Tahití de Duvalier.

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. ( )

There is something appealing and genuine in a book where you have misgivings about all of the characters. People nursing their dreams and scheming along during the tyrany of Haiti in the 60's. On a lower level its also about distrust, deception and identity. How much you can really know people, who and what they are when alone and among others. ( )

A quite frigid novel, even by the cold and cynical standards of Graham Greene. If you work hard at it, there is a somewhat cloudy theme you can trace throughout the book, following the three 'comedians' of the title as they navigate the strange and voodoo-soaked dictatorship of 'Papa Doc' Duvalier's post-colonial Haiti. Brown (the narrator), Smith and Jones are characters "interchangeable like comic masks in a farce" (pg. 23), and though they see life as a comedy rather than a tragedy (pg. 31), it is not ha-ha comedy but instead involves laughing at the cruelty of the world, for fear of crying.

It is a theme that rewards engagement, even if it does become rather tangled as the story progresses and can only truly be seen after finishing the book and appraising it. Of the three, Jones' storyline is the best, and the novel only really works when it is prominent. No one really leaps out as a character (the affair with Martha is a complete dud, as is the Smith arc) and Greene is frequently indulgent in his dialogue and prosing. The Comedians can't be considered a failure, but I struggle to say that it achieves either. ( )

Writing is excellent. Story and topic depressing but well done. ( )