The Comedians

In Port-au-Prince during the Duvalier era, strangers become entangled in Haiti's corruption, fear, and violence. Under Papa Doc's rule and his paramilitary force, the Tontons Macoute, the country has lost its tourist appeal. Instead, it harbors corrupt capitalists, foreign ambassadors and their isolated wives, and a group of newcomers arriving on the Dutch cargo ship Medea: two well-meaning Americans promoting vegetarianism, a former World War II jungle fighter turned confidence man, and an English hotelier returning to manage the Trianon, an unsalable hotel in the hills above the capital. Each character maintains a facade, but when bound together in this republic marked by poverty, passionate affairs, and impending violence, their masks are stripped away. The novel was banned in Haiti and condemned by Papa Doc Duvalier. Greene adapted it into a 1967 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.