The Honorary Consul
First edition
|
|
| Author | Graham Greene |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Spy novel |
| Published | 1973 |
| Publisher | Bodley Head |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 335 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 769086 |
| 823/.9/12 | |
| LC Class | PR6013.R44 H6 |
| Preceded by | Travels with My Aunt (1969)' |
| Followed by | The Human Factor (1978)' |
The Honorary Consul is a British thriller novel by Graham Greene, published in 1973. It was one of the author's own favourite works. The title is a reference to the diplomatic position known as an honorary consul.
The story is set in the city of Corrientes, part of the Argentine Littoral, on the shore of the Paraná River in Argentina.
Eduardo Plarr is a young medical doctor of English descent. As a boy, he had left Paraguay with his mother, escaping from the political turmoil there to Buenos Aires, while his English father remained in Paraguay as a political rebel. Aside from a single hand-delivered letter, they never hear from the father again.
When Plarr moves to the quiet, subtropical backwater town of Argentine Littoral, he strikes up an acquaintance with the only two other English inhabitants—a bitter old English teacher, Humphries, and British Honorary Consul Charles Fortnum, a divorced, self-pitying alcoholic who misuses his position. Plarr's other principal acquaintance is Julio Saavedra, a forgotten but self-important Argentine writer of novels full of silent machismo.
Visiting a local brothel with Saavedra, Plarr is attracted to a girl, but she is taken by another man. A couple of years later, he is called to treat Fortnum's new wife, whom Plarr recognizes as the girl from the brothel, Clara. Although he has never been to England, Plarr regards himself as a cool, self-controlled Englishman, but nonetheless finds himself becoming obsessed by Clara, and seduces her by buying her some sunglasses. They begin an affair, although he tries to remain emotionally distant from her.
"Caring is the only dangerous thing," Plarr says in the novel. "`Love' was a claim which he wouldn't meet, a responsibility he would refuse to accept, a demand. So many times his mother had used the word when he was a child; it was like the threat of an armed robber. `Put up your hands or else ...' Something was always asked in return: obedience, an apology, a kiss which one had no desire to give."
Clara eventually becomes pregnant, and Fortnum, believing the child is his, starts drinking less.
Some of Plarr's friends from school turn up at his surgery, one of them is a failed priest named Rivas. They have news of Plarr's father, who is alive and in a jail in Paraguay. They hatch a plot, for which they need a doctor's assistance, to kidnap the US ambassador on his trip to Corrientes. They intend to demand the release of political prisoners in Paraguay, including Plarr's father, in return for the ambassador's release. But the band kidnaps the wrong man, Charley Fortnum, the Honorary Consul, whom they take to a squalid hut in a shanty town.
...
Wikipedia