BOOK: Light Shelf Rub to Boards; Edges Lightly Soiled; Slight Yellowing Due to Age. DUST JACKET: Lightly Creased; Lightly Chipped; In Archival Quality Jacket Cover. SUB-TITLE: The Story of an Involvement. JACKET DESIGN: Public Good. CONTENTS: Foreword; Part I, 1976; Part II, 1977; Part III, 1978; Part IV, 1979 and 1980; Epilogue; Postscript. SYNOPSIS: In the winter of 1976, Graham Greene was invited to Panama by Omar Torrijos, the charismatic general who had taken power in 1968. His book is an account of that visit and the friendship that continued through subsequent visits. Graham Greene's penetrating and moving descriptions of Panama and its people reconfirm his mastery of travel writing, and the extraordinary Torrijos--complex, courageous, deeply democratic and profoundly human--emerges as one of the most fascinating characters in all of Graham Greene's books. Graham Greene writes in his Preface: "In August 1981 my bag was packed for my fifth visit to Panama when the news came to me over the telephone of the death of General Omar Torrijos Herrera, my friend and host. The small plane in which he was flying to a house which he owned at Coclesito in the mountains of Panama had crashed, and there were no survivors. A few days later the voice of his security guard, Sergeant Chuchu, alias Jose de Jesus Martinez, ex-Professor of Marxist Philosophy at Panama University, Professor of Mathematics and a poet, told me, 'There was a bomb in the plane. I know there was a bomb in the plane, but I can't tell you why over the telephone.' "At that moment the idea came to me to write a short personal memoir, based on the diaries which I had kept over the last five years, as a tribute to a man whom during that time I had grown to love. But as soon as I had written the first sentences after the title, Getting to Know the General, I realized that it was not only the General whom I had got to know over those five years--it was also Chuchu, perhaps the only man in the National Guard whom the General trusted completely, and it was this bizarre and beautiful little country, split in two by the Canal and the American Zone, a country which had become, thanks to the General, of great practical importance in the struggle for liberation taking place in Nicaragua and El Salvador." Graham Greene was born in 1904 in Berkhamsted, England. Size: 8vo - over 7�" - 9�" tall.

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Bibliographic Details

Title

Getting to Know the General

Publisher

Lester & Orpen Dennys Publishers Limited

Publication Date

1984

Language

English

ISBN 10

0886190762

ISBN 13

9780886190767

Binding

Hard Cover

Condition

As New

Dust Jacket Condition

As New

Seller catalogs

Biography - Political Figures

About this title

Synopsis

In August 1981 my bag was packed for my fifth visit to Panama when the news came to me over the telephone of the death of General Omar Torrijos Herrera, my friend and host. . . At that moment the idea came to me to write a short personal memoir. . . of a man I had grown to love over those five years' GETTING TO KNOW THE GENERAL is Graham Greene's account of a five-year personal involvement with Omar Torrijos, ruler of Panama from 1968-81 and Sergeant Chuchu, one of the few men in the National Guard whom the General trusted completely. It is a fascinating tribute to an inspirational politician in the vital period of his country's history, and to an unusual and enduring friendship.

About the Author

Graham Greene was born in 1904. He worked as a journalist and critic, and in 1940 became literary editor of the Spectator. He was later employed by the Foreign Office. As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, three books of autobiography, two of biography and four books for children. He also wrote hundreds of essays, and film and book reviews. Graham Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour. He died in April 1991.

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