- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (3 Oct 1991)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 014018497X
- ISBN-13: 978-0140184976
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 625,692 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Honorary Consul
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"The tension never relaxes and one reads hungrily from page to page, reading the moment it will end." - Auberon Waugh, "Evening Standard"
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
CENTENARY EDITION WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
South America in the 1970s. A group of revolutionaries plan to highlight their cause by kidnapping the American ambassador. Unfortunately, they get it wrong and kidnap instead Charley Fortnum, a boozy expatriate Briton whose quasi-official status as an honorary consul amunts to little more than the right to import and sell a car every two years. Dr Plarr, one of only two other Britons in the city, is involved from the start: not only was it he who provided the revolutionaries with their information, but he is also having an affair with Fortnum's young wife. Though this is more sombre in tone than some of Greene's other 'entertainments', there is much wry humour in these pages, but what struck me most was the degree of emotional involvement Greene manages to produce in what could easily have been a cynical tale of unprincipled behaviour and bungling. The novel takes us down a dark road, and I found some of the later scenes really quite sad, but I hope I'm not giving too much away by saying that the road leads eventually to redemption - of a kind.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Never thought I'd give an 'average' review to a Graham Greene novel, but that's how it feels: average. Average only to a great author's standards of course, which is pretty high all the same, but it seems as though he's just treading old ground here.
If you're a dedicated fan there is absolutely no reason not to read this, but if you're only just discovering the author, pick up another of his works to start with.
If you're a dedicated fan there is absolutely no reason not to read this, but if you're only just discovering the author, pick up another of his works to start with.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
With all due respect to the in house reviewer I would like to assure all potential readers of this fine novel that it is in no way a political book. The politics referred to serve to bring the characters together. At no point in the novel does Greene investigate any of the characters' politics. Nor does he analyse the political situation in Paraguay and Argentina where the novel is set.
It is a novel about love; about the inability to love and the nature of love. It's about the nature of god and how the protagonists have to come to terms with the difficult idea that god is both good and evil. It's about the nature of the catholic church; the complicated nature of human beings. It's about that favourite paradox of Green's that very often those seemingly furthest from redemption, humanity and god are in fact the closest to them.
It's a beautiful book aching with humanity- our foibles, our goodness and our badness. But please don't call it a political book. Greene would have had a fit. It is after all the novel he most preferred of all those he wrote.
It is a novel about love; about the inability to love and the nature of love. It's about the nature of god and how the protagonists have to come to terms with the difficult idea that god is both good and evil. It's about the nature of the catholic church; the complicated nature of human beings. It's about that favourite paradox of Green's that very often those seemingly furthest from redemption, humanity and god are in fact the closest to them.
It's a beautiful book aching with humanity- our foibles, our goodness and our badness. But please don't call it a political book. Greene would have had a fit. It is after all the novel he most preferred of all those he wrote.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
One of Greene's best novels
This book typifies what many people have labelled as `Greeneland': a tragi-comic world (usually more tragic than comic) in which people are confronted by awkward choices which... Read more
Published 5 months ago by James
Genius, pure, simple
Graham Greene's The Honorary Consul is a deceptively ambitious project. And this applies as much to the reading of this great work as to its writing. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Philip Spires
Bleak, But The Pleasures of Reading It Are Many
"The Honorary Consul," apparently the 23d novel by Graham Greene, written rather later in his long career, might, perhaps, crassly be described as a bleak, slow thriller. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Stephanie DePue
Greene's most enduring novel
In a provincial town 800 km north of Buenos Aires a group of revolutionaries kidnap by mistake Charly Fortnum, the Honorary Consul, instead of the American Ambassador. Read more
Published on 25 Jan 2007 by HORAK
gripping
This perfectly judged, beautifully paced novel is full of marvellous characters. It's definitely one of the best books I've read this year. Read more
Published on 21 Nov 2006 by a nice guy who likes reading
Not Greene's at his best.
I enjoyed this book over-all, however it did seem to me to be slow-moving in parts. Focusing on the despair of the main charachter, Greene explores the familiar subject of... Read more
Published on 29 July 2001
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
