The Honorary Consul

Name: The Honorary Consul
Rating: 3.83 (6336 reviews)

by Graham Greene

First published 1973

Amazon

3.8(6,336)

Dr Eduardo Plarr lives in an Argentine town near Paraguay, waiting for information about the father who disappeared after opposing the Paraguayan dictatorship. A group of revolutionaries plans to kidnap an American ambassador and exchange him for political prisoners, but instead seizes the alcoholic British honorary consul Charley Fortnum.

Plarr is drawn into negotiations because he knows both the kidnappers and Fortnum’s wife Clara, with whom he is having an affair. The mistaken abduction exposes the weakness of political slogans when confronted with an inconvenient human life. Priests, guerrillas, diplomats and doctors all claim moral necessity, yet none can control the violence their decisions release.