In 1966, British novelist Graham Greene published The Comedians, a political novel set amid the fear and corruption of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s Haiti. In 1967, Hollywood brought the story to the screen in a star-studded adaptation. Decades later—against the backdrop of another era of Haitian turmoil—the real building that inspired The Comedians’ fictional Hotel Trianon was destroyed in an act of violence emblematic of chronic instability in Haiti’s capital. Both book and film sought to capture Haiti in crisis, and both were rooted in a real place whose history mirrors the nation’s own turbulent arc.
Greene’s Novel: Satire, Repression, and Moral Ambiguity
The Comedians (published in the United States in early 1965 and in the United Kingdom in 1966) unfolds in Haiti under the dictatorial rule of François Duvalier and his feared Tontons Macoutes secret police. The protagonist, Mr. Brown, is a jaded English hotel owner who returns to Port-au-Prince to manage his failing establishment, only to be confronted with the absurdity, brutality, and political skirmishes that defined Duvalier’s regime. The title refers ironically to Brown and two other foreigners—Smith and Jones—whose actions, ostensibly comic or naive, unfold against a backdrop of terror and repression.
Greene crafted a narrative rich in characters whose moral world is shaded by compromise and ambivalence. A naïve American vegetarian presidential hopeful emerges with unexpected depth, while others meet tragic ends. Greene used his fiction to critique not only Haiti’s dictatorship but the cynicism and impotence of well-meaning outsiders who fail to grasp the real stakes of Haitian life.
Duvalier himself reacted angrily to Greene’s portrayal, condemning the novel in state-run media and disparaging Greene personally—a testament to how sharply the book struck Haitian politics at the time.
The novel’s setting, characters, and political anxieties were drawn from reality. Greene had visited Haiti and was struck by the surreal combination of tropical beauty and pervasive dread that defined everyday life under Duvalier—conditions he translated into fiction with trenchant, often darkly comic prose.
The 1967 Film: Hollywood and Haiti’s Story on the Screen
Released in 1967, the film adaptation of The Comedians brought Greene’s grim satire to international cinema screens. Directed and produced by Peter Glenville with a screenplay by Greene himself, the film featured a remarkable cast: Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Alec Guinness, and Peter Ustinov, among others.
The plot parallels the novel, centering on Brown’s struggles and the political crises swirling around Haiti: arrests, beatings, and the looming threat of the Tontons Macoutes. In the film, Brown’s hotel—inherited from his mother—becomes the focal point for encounters with diplomats, would-be reformers, and shady arms dealers, all within the tense, oppressive atmosphere of Duvalier’s Haiti.
Despite its high profile cast and evocative script, the film faced challenges. One of the most visible was logistical: production could not take place in Haiti because the political conditions were judged too unstable and dangerous for a film crew. Instead, location shooting occurred in Dahomey (modern Benin) in West Africa and on the Côte d’Azur in France.
This practical choice — necessitated by risk, not artistic preference — underscores the persistent instability Greene had evoked in his novel. Haiti was not a hospitable environment for filmmakers even two decades after the Duvalier regime began. The film’s inability to depict the story in its indigenous landscape ironically reinforced the instability and danger that were central to Greene’s themes: a political environment so fraught that even a major motion picture could not be safely produced there.
Hotel Oloffson: From Mansion to Literary Icon
At the heart of both book and film is a hotel—in Greene’s world, the fictional Hotel Trianon; in the real world, Hotel Oloffson in central Port-au-Prince.
Originally built in 1887 as a private mansion for Haiti’s influential Sam family—including future president Tirésias Simon Sam—the structure exemplified Haitian gingerbread architecture, with ornate fretwork, turrets, and a tropical garden.
After the assassination of President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam in 1915 and subsequent U.S. military intervention, the mansion served as a Marine Corps hospital during America’s occupation of Haiti (1915–1934). Afterward, it was converted into a hotel in 1935.
Under various owners, the Oloffson became a magnet for expatriates, writers, and celebrities, known in its heyday as the “Greenwich Village of the Tropics.” Its veranda bar and gardens were famed as informal salons for debate and gossip—a feeling reminiscent of Greene’s fictional Trianon.
The hotel also fostered cultural life in Haiti, especially under the management of musician Richard A. Morse from the late 1980s. He transformed the Oloffson into a hub for mizik rasin, a fusion of Haitian roots music and rock, making its Thursday performances legendary among locals and visitors alike.
American visitors—from Greene himself to travel writer Anthony Bourdain—praised the Oloffson for its charm and cultural vibrancy. At times it stood as one of the few surviving gingerbread houses in Port-au-Prince, a testament to Haiti’s architectural heritage.
Politics, Violence, and the Hotel’s End
Haiti’s political troubles were never far from the Oloffson’s doorstep. After the Duvalier dynasty ended in the 1980s, Haiti endured coups, economic collapse, natural disasters, and a steady erosion of security. Gang violence, in particular, has devastated neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince in the 2020s.
By mid-2024, rising insecurity had forced the hotel to stop accepting guests, and its staff had dwindled to a skeleton crew before abandoning the property entirely. In March 2025, gangs breached the hotel’s courtyard, though they were temporarily repelled.
Then, in July 2025, amid intense clashes between Haitian police and gang coalitions like Viv Ansanm, the Oloffson was burned down in what local authorities and reports describe as an arson attack during the fighting. Drone footage and contemporary accounts captured its complete incineration.
Media reports characterize the destruction as part of a broader campaign of violence and territorial control by armed gangs. While the precise identity and motive of the arsonists remain opaque, the gossip among residents and officials is that the burning was not targeted at the hotel itself but was part of an escalation in clashes that left several buildings decimated.
The loss of the Oloffson became a symbolic blow not just to Haitian heritage but to the fragile cultural identity embodied in a single structure that had survived dictatorships, earthquakes, and economic turmoil.
Comparing Story and Reality
Greene’s novel and its film adaptation dramatized Haiti in crisis during Duvalier’s rule—where politics, fear, and personal folly collided. The Oloffson, as the model for the fictional hotel, stood apart yet intimately connected to these themes: an architectural witness to Haiti’s vicissitudes.
In both art forms, Haiti’s world is one where outsiders—tourists, political idealists, and would-be saviors—stumble into deeper, darker realities than they expect. Greene’s “comedians” are comic precisely because their pretenses are absurd in the face of systemic terror and social collapse.
In real life, the Oloffson’s centurylong story—from mansion to hospital to hotel, from cultural beacon to smoldering ruin—mirrors Haiti’s own cycles of hope, foreign influence, artistic efflorescence, political brutality, and, ultimately, fragility.
While the novel and film freeze Haiti in a particular historical moment—the Duvalier era—the hotel’s destruction in 2025 frames a new chapter of instability. It asks enduring questions: What survives when institutions collapse? What becomes of heritage when social order dissolves? How do outsiders interpret, misinterpret, or fail to understand a nation like Haiti?
If The Comedians captured a nation’s soul in words and frames, the Oloffson’s ashes capture a tragic coda: a reminder that real histories often outpace fiction, and that buildings, like stories, carry the weight of human experience until the very end.
