Fiction & other works · 1973 · novel

The Honorary Consul

by Graham Greene

The Honorary Consul is a British thriller novel by Graham Greene, published in 1973. Greene considered it one of his favourite works. It is set at the run-up to Argentina's 'Dirty War' in the early 1970s. The story is set in the provincial city of Corrientes, part of the Argentine Littoral, on the shore of the Paraná River. Eduardo Plarr is an unmarried medical doctor of English descent who, as a boy, fled to Buenos Aires with his Paraguayan mother to escape the political turmoil of Paraguay. His English father remained in Paraguay as a political rebel and, aside from a single hand-delivered letter, they never hear from him again. When Plarr moves to Corrientes, a quiet, subtropical backwater, he meets the two other English inhabitants: Humphries, a bitter elderly English teacher; and Charles Fortnum, the unimportant British honorary consul, a divorced, self-pitying alcoholic who abuses his position for gain. Plarr also meets Julio Saavedra, a forgotten but self-important Argentine writer of novels full of silent machismo. Visiting the town brothel with Saavedra, Plarr is attracted to a girl, Clara, but she is taken by another man. Later, when he is called to treat...

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