Customer Reviews

Human Factor

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The New York Times called this the best espionage novel ever. I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, this is one of the best novels I've ever read, period. A great strength of this book is that you really care about the protaganist. He's very much your average, decent guy with a wife, step-kid and dog. He puts in his hours at the office each day, then goes home to them every night, just as millions of us do. There are no fancy gadgets or outlandish threats to the solar system in this story. Thus, the drama, centering on believable characters, is all the more palpable. Once the story takes off you can feel the tension and anticipation buidling up all around you.

The plot is both simple and ingenious. British intelligence suspects a mole is passing info on sourthern Africa to the Soviets and moves to eliminate the suspect, leading to a great plot twist. Throw in what is for my money some of the best dialogue ever put on paper (e.g. the hilarious conversation about malteazers candy) and the result is an absolute classic. I've read several of Greene's novels including the renowned The Heart of the Matter, and The Human Factor tops my list. If you crave a novel that you just can't put down, this is surely it.

This book presents a very believable portrait of espionage during the cold war. No guns, no gadgets, no glamour. Just a drab monotonous life infused with constant paranoia and ending in tragedy. Quite a contrast to Our Man In Havana, although the main characters share much of the same insecurities (as most Greene characters seem to). The hero is a completely sympathetic character who loves his wife and child and hates the cruelty that the world has shown his wife and will surely show his child. And although he has become jaded and old he idealistically decides to punish the West for its racism by spying for the East (ironic considering the level of racism in the East). In the end he looses what he had, he looses what he loved, and he gains nothing. This was the first Graham Greene novel that I read, in high school, 15 years ago. It hooked me and I have read most of his other works since then. Many other authors have created stupid banal characters living the seedy life, but only Greene (in my limited reading) has created human, complex, intelligent characters.....living the seedy life.

This is an uncomplicated tale of cold war espionage told with elegant simplicity by Greene. It follows the fortunes of Maurice Castle, a British ex-diplomat working in the African section of the foreign office. When a leak is traced to within Castle's small team, his past is drawn into focus and his ordered life comes into contact with sinister players. Greene, who is economical in his storytelling keeps the cast of characters tight. Although the book is clearly dated, its simplicity allows it to remain compelling to a contemporary audience. The plot is simplistic, and this isn't one of Greene's better known novels however this is a great example of good storytelling. Thematically, the novel concerns the nature of loyalty and the presence of wrongdoing on both sides of the cold war equation. This is in some ways more interesting now more than thirty years on, as the sins of the cold war era become increasingly well understood.

Greene takes the reader inside the dreary, cynical world of detente era espionage. The very few people who care about anything larger than themselves are deluded out-of-touch idealists or fanatics. No one will be caught out dreaming of a better world, unless it exists in the past. The 1970's were like that. Castle is neither an idealist nor a fanatic, but he is obsessively in love with his African wife. A secret agreement among apartheid South Africa, England and the US leads to desparate steps and the ultimate denouement.

A brilliant portrayal of the spy's inner world. I love John LeCarre's work, but Greene's Maurice Castle excels even LeCarre's George Smiley.

Although several of the other reviewers seemed to approach this novel as a "spy" story, I thought that Greene was conducting a rather intense character sketch of one man. Certain social topics were approached (communism, McCarthyism, apartheid,etc), but they were never discussed outside of the mind of the main character. This is a very interesting composition on individuality and what that means. It discusses how individual actions can transcend political and philosophical ideologies. A very good novel...find a used copy up for auction--its worth it!

Graham Greene (1904-1991), who was one of the more illustrious British writers of the 20th century, enjoyed a very long life, and a long, prolific writing career, during which he gave us The Power and the Glory; The Third Man;The End of the Affair; and Our Man in Havana, among many other well-known masterworks, most of which were made into notable films. ( The Third Man;The End of the Affair; Our Man in Havana.)

The author, in fact, bookended the life, and writing career, of another very-well known British author of spy novels, Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, 007. Furthermore, Greene was still at work -- he published up until almost his death-- when John LeCarre, another well-known British writer of spy stories, whom he heavily influenced, was hitting his late-middle writing years. However, the LeCarre-Greene relationship might best be considered a two-way street, as "The Human Factor,"the Graham Greene book at hand, has a plot that strongly resembles those by LeCarre; and characters that aren't so different from those of the younger man, either. Be that as it may, Greene's books were very well-written, highly literate, much praised by the critics, and enjoyed a wide readership.

When Greene's rather late-career "The Human Factor" was published in 1978, it spent six months on "The New York Times" Best Seller List. This was remarkable only insofar as Greene apparently didn't much care for it, called it "a dead albatross round his neck," and threatened "to leave it in his drawer," as the writers' phrase for holding a book back from publication goes. Nevertheless, he sent a copy of the manuscript to notorious British counterspy/defector Kim Philby in Moscow: they'd been friends since Oxford days. Greene always denied that Maurice Castle, counterspy/protagonist of this novel, was based on Philby; their career arcs, however, echoed each other. (By the way, the real-life mole Philby blew the covers of many British agents secreted in the Communist bloc. John LeCarre, under his real name, David Cornwell,among them.)

Greene himself had first-hand spy experience. He'd been recruited to Britain's World War II Secret Service, MI5, upon Philby's recommendation, to serve in the African country of Sierra Leone. And he has set this novel in the lonely, dangerous world of the spy. "The Firm," as Greene called the Secret Service, with "C" as its Control, employs near-retirement Castle, after an undistinguished career, in the small, unimportant African bureau. Castle's brash younger colleague, Davis, is itching to get out from behind the desk, and hopes to go to Sierra Leone. Agency administrators become convinced that there's a leak in the small bureau, and Davis pays for it. But the agency fails to recognize the human factor. Castle appears settled, middle-aged, suburban. Still, he's married to a black South African woman he'd smuggled out of that country, stepfather to her black son, and has reasons to hate that juggernaut, particularly when the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States make it secret commitments.

This book was evidently quite personal to Greene. Aside from the Sierra Leone echo, he portrays Castle as living quite happily in suburban Berkhamsted, his own home town. Greene was a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, England's famous, ancient university. He was one of the better-known Catholic converts of his time; many of his books deal with Catholic themes of guilt and redemption. He wrote a tight thriller, in a lean, realistic style, that boasted almost cinematic visuals. His spycraft was accurate, his plots sufficed. He created characters with internal lives; they faced struggles, and sometimes they despaired, or suffered world-weary cynicism, but often they prevailed. He always treated them with insight and compassion. Critics have pegged "The Human Factor" as one of Greene's late, lesser works. If he interests you, you might want to start with one of his earlier, better-known books, but this one isn't too shabby.

This is not one of Graham Greene's most famous books, but I think it's one of his best. Like many of his stories, it sets up a tension between a big historical drama and the personal drama of a relatively minor actor within it. And as in others of those stories, Greene refuses to resolve the tension.

The plot involves a British Military Intelligence agent, Castle, who, while stationed in Africa, falls in love with a black South African woman, Sarah. In order to stay together and marry her, Castle makes a deal with the devil -- he agrees to become a double agent, passing along western intelligence to Soviet KGB agents. He regards the intelligence he is passing along as inconsequential, and the deal is worth the risk, given that it is the only way to stay with Sarah, and Sarah's young son, Sam (fathered by a black South African man).

The "devil" he makes his deal with, though, is not really the KGB. It's really with the whole system -- MI5, South Africa, KGB, and the Cold War altogether. He tries to negotiate a life for himself within that big structure of ideological war and espionage, and of course, he knows that the life he negotiates will never be at peace. There will always be the danger, even inevitability, of being found out. When that happens, the negotiations must start again.

In all of this, the issue is, which stage is the one that counts? The stage on which Castle lives his personal life, his domestic oasis with his wife and son, or the political stage on which he lives his double-agent life in the midst of international tension and cut-throat espionage.

On one stage, Castle is a traitor, but on the other he is loyal, even heroic. As things come unraveled, he says to Sarah, "Well, I'm what's generally called a traitor." And Sarah answers, "Who cares? . . . We have our own country. You and I and Sam. You've never betrayed that country . . ."

Greene himself served in the British Secret Service. This book and Our Man in Havana reflect, to me anyway, a recognition that the international intelligence game has a special kind of irrational autonomy. From one perspective (much but not all of Our Man in Havana) that autonomy is farcical -- vacuum cleaner designs can pass as weapons intelligence. But from the other it is pointlessly destructive, especially of the ability of normal people involved in it to live normal lives of everyday virtue.

Publishing this novel in 1978, Greene says in his autobiography (Ways of Escape, pp. 256 - 257) that he had actually started it ten years earlier, abandoning it when his friend and former colleague, Kim Philby, defected to Russia. He did not want this book to be considered a roman a clef. Like Philby, Maurice Castle, the main character in this novel, is a double agent, and Greene goes to great pains to bring him to life and try to make his inevitable defection to Russia believable. Having earlier lived in South Africa, Castle had fallen in love with Sarah, an African woman. Another double agent had helped her escape from South Africa so she and Castle could be married. Now living in England with Sarah and their son, Castle continues to provide information to the Russians as payback for the help he received years before.

The cloak-and-dagger intrigue here is rooted in the Cold War, and Greene's own sympathies with the Communists, well known, are noticeable throughout the novel. When a leak is suspected in Castle's section of British intelligence, a secret plan is devised to eliminate the culprit quietly to avoid another Philby-type embarrassment to the government. It is of only minor consequence to the higher-ups that they kill Davis, an innocent man. The Russian' rush to "save" Castle, whose work for them has really been of only minor importance, seems more like wishful thinking than reality. Codes created from duplicate copies of old books, messages left in a hollow tree, and warning signals made with rings of the telephone now seem to belong to an age much earlier than the mere 24 years which have evolved since the book's publication.

Castle is well drawn, for the most part, though he seems a rather clumsy agent-about-to-defect, someone who, though supposedly devoted to his wife and child, has not thought far enough ahead to guarantee their ultimate safety and happiness. Sarah, unfortunately, is an undifferentiated, flat character, and Castle's devotion to her must be accepted, rather than felt, thereby limiting the impact of the ending. Parts of the book are very moving, and Castle is often a sympathetic character, but I thought the book lacked the philosophical and structural tightness of his earlier, more famous novels. Mary Whipple

Graham Greene makes good use of his keen eye for human foibles in ``The Human Factor.'' Greene and John Le Carre are the masters of telling stories of intelligence agencies where intelligence is the thing usually most lacking.

This compelling tale centers on Maurice Castle and his black African wife, Sarah. Castle, an aging Briton, fell in love with Sarah, one of his agents in South Africa. Maurice helps Sarah evade capture by the apartheid-era South African police. Sarah and her son are smuggled to England where she sets up house with Maurice, who pretends to be the child's father.

Maurice continues working in the British Foreign Office. He hopes being a continent removed will mean safety and security for his family. But, as with many of Greene's superbly drawn characters, the past continues its encroachment on the present.

Human bungling and caprice causes a wrongful death. Maurice's serene journey to his pension is interrupted and he must act again to save his family.

The plot takes a few surprise turns (including a startling revelation by a communist agent and the reason why the seemingly useless information from Africa was important after all) before Maurice has to confront the most implacable foe of a man of secrets -- loneliness.

Published in 1978, ``The Human Factor'' is for spy readers who are interested in more than an Ian Fleming trollop. The book is an intelligent meditation on love and secrecy and the sacrifices demanded by both.

He wrote them so well. Even though this plot exists in a cold war context and apartheid in South Africa provides the chief motivation of the central character, this work's clear-eyed writing and well-constructed action engage the reader still. It's Graham Greene's sensibility that keeps things fresh. His understanding of ambiguities, ironies, and vast areas of human behavior can be seen everywhere. What the world considers heroes and villains are not so easily reduced to such simple formulations in Greene's world. The government must defend the nation, even at the expense of its own citizens. Lives are expendable. The fascinating realm of espionage is vastly treacherous, and otherwise nice, bland, even literary human beings are capable of lies, betrayal, and murder. Some are "company" men, and like so many businessmen, they are loyal to the company's mission, and will make whatever sacrifices are needed to ensure order and safety and reputation. Dr. Percival, for instance, does his job well. He could just as easily be a senior VP in any Fortune 500 company. The worst thing one can do to undo the company's mission is to form attachments. Greene quotes his favorite author, Joseph Conrad, "I only know that he who forms a tie is lost. The germ of corruption has entered into his soul." It is Maurice Castle who is attached, while others around him are organization men living in secrecy and suspicion. The joy of Greene's books is to feel the characters come alive. These are people who, back in the 1970s, still cared about literature and what people like Tolstoy and Trollope had to say. The Everyman edition is well designed, and a handy timeline in the front places this work in the context of Greene's output. An excellent introduction by Peter Kemp helps us understand the roots of this work and Greene's struggles with it.