And Graham didn't like it! - Rated 
This apparently, was not a good novel in the opinion of... Graham Greene. I am ashamed to say, it was the first GG novel I had read, and I absolutely loved it. Set in the nightmarish world of Papa Doc and the Tontons Macoute in Haiti in the 60s, it has an almost deliciously depressing appeal just in its writing style. It's not too heavy on facts , but you realise GG knew the place, and it'll come as no surprise that many characters were based on real people. I was SO upset when I finished this. Immediately after I read Half of a Yellow Sun, by a 'modern master' - It was pale, lame and boring in comparison to this book.
Comedy and tragedy in the dark night of Haiti - Rated
Three men meet on the Medea, a ship sailing from Philadelphia to Haiti, a country then in the grip of the corrupt Doctor Duvalier - Papa Doc - and his sinister secret police, the Tontons Macoute.
Brown is a sixty-year old owner of the hotel Trianon in Port-au-Prince which he inherited from his mother. The place used to swarm with guests, there used to be cocktails and music but now with the Duvalier regime, hardly any tourists come to Haiti. He is a man without roots and often disillusioned because he has lost the capacity to be concerned, Yet subsequent events in the novel show that he is a man who can get involved if the situation requires him to do so, even at the expense of his own safety. In this sense he is a true humanist.
Mr and Mrs Smith are an American couple travelling to Haiti to open a centre of vegetarian cooking in Port-au-Prince. The reality they are about to discover is bound to disappoint them bitterly. These two characters show that a passionate belief in the integrity of the world may not be a simple flaw in character.
And then there is Mr Jones the confidence man whom everyone likes because he can make people laugh despite the fact that little of what he claims can be taken seriously.
These are the comedians in Mr Greene's novel. As the narrator states at one point: as long as we pretend, we escape. The atrocious dictatorship of Papa Doc is vividly portrayed and looking back it seems hardly believable that such an appalling personage was once viewed as a safeguard against communism in Haiti by Washington. The darkness and the terror of the curfew, the telephones that don't work, the Tontons Macoute in their dark glasses, the violence, injustice, torture and poverty, everything is sharply described by the author. And yet despite all the pain there is always time for love and laughter.
This book has been published as an audiobook by the BBC and is read in a superb way by the comedian Tim Pigott-Smith.
A masterpiece - Rated
I first read "The Comedians" around thirty years ago and then again around twenty years ago. Remembering how much I enjoyed and admired the novel I have just finished re-reading it and have now sadly closed the book. It is an extremely satisfying novel written by one of the finest novelists of the 20th century. The three main characters are the men, Brown, Smith (with the feisty Mrs. Smith) and Jones who meet as strangers on board the cargo-ship "Medea" bound from New York to Haiti where their paths cross and re-cross. Brown, the main character, is a rootless hotelier with a shady past and without faith or hope. Smith is a one-time American Presidential Candidate on an evangelic crusade to establish a vegetarian centre. Jones is a mystery at first, a liar certainly, a con man perhaps, who falls in and out with the regime but eventually finds some redemption. Set in the era of Papa Doc Duvalier's misrule with his sinister Tonton Macoute secret police the novel captures the atmosphere of a nation failed by it's corrupt leaders with a people living in fear and oppression. But this story is not about Haiti, it is about failed romance, disillusionment, cynicism but with some hope and redemption (but not for all). The introduction by Paul Theroux is a spoiler - he unravels and lays bare the plot and it is his opinion that this is "not one of Greenes best" and a "tepid novel" - whatever that means. I strongly advise readers to read Theroux's introduction AFTER the book and make their own minds up. I believe this to be one of Greenes finest novels that even thirty years on from our first meeting was immensely pleasurable to read and one I highly recommend.
Commitment and insight - Rated 
This book is about the commited and the uncommited, the passive and the active.
Set in Haiti against the scenery of Papa Doc's authoritarian rule and the Tonton Macoute with their dark glasses and sinister ways the comedians play their parts. The narrator, Mr Brown is a citizen of Mote Carlo, a citizen without ties. He is seemingly indifferent, whereas the mysterious Jones seems to be a man of purpose. And Mr and Mrs Smith, well he was a presidential candidate. As Greene weaves this story of people going about their lives in extraodinary circumstances we see no one is quite who they seem.
Insightful and the more I think about this and dwell on it the more I like it. One I will visit again.
Very sarcastic indeed; offers some good insights - Rated
The book would have probably been banned in today's world of 'politically correct', but, looking over the particular circumstances described, it offers a couple of insights. It seems to say that people do things out of boredom and vanity, whether the things are heroic, comic or evil. Most of them to not admit it to themselves, however, thus believing themselves to have 'real' commitments and desires. This belief feeds them with the energy for aplomb, heroism and evil-doing, as well as for any emotion of non-superficial kind. The 'disillusioned', admitting boredom and vanity as the sole cuases of their actions (like the narrator and Martha), are the passive audience of there own lives. All in all the book is an interesting and relatively easy read; I think it might profit from translations/explanations of a number of French terms appearing here and there throughout the book (intended, perhaps, to give a feel of Haiti).
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