Reading Globally: Haiti

My first new country was Haiti in The Comedians by Graham Greene.

Quite a typical Graham Greene novel - exotic location, infidelity, religion and the absurdity of politics all there. The novel had a strange structure in that it you were told that one of the main characters was going to die at the start and the blurb on the back of my copy mentioned a letter from the doctor which is only received in the finally pages.

Set during the dictatorship of Papa Doc, the book gave an idea of some of the horrors of his reign but from a detached outsider's perspective. Nonetheless it was fascinating to read about the turbulent era in the country and despite the seriousness of the circumstances, there were some good bits of humour in the book too.

It has left me interested in reading more and I will try to get hold of a book from a native writer to see how this compares.