The Quiet American

It's 1955 and British journalist Thomas Fowler has been in Vietnam for two years covering the insurgency against French colonial rule. But it's not just a political tangle that's kept him tethered to the country. There's also his lover, Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman who clings to Fowler for protection. Then comes Alden Pyle, an idealistic American working in service of the CIA. Devotedly, disastrously patriotic, he believes neither communism nor colonialism is what's best for Southeast Asia, but rather a "Third Force": American democracy by any means necessary. His ideas of conquest include Phuong, to whom he promises a sweet life in the states. But as Pyle's blind moral conviction wreaks havoc upon innocent lives, it's ultimately his romantic compulsions that will play a role in his own undoing.

Although criticized upon publication as anti-American, Graham Greene's "complex but compelling story of intrigue and counter-intrigue" would, in a few short years, prove prescient in its own condemnation of American interventionism ( The New York Times).

Praise for The Quiet American

"There has been no novel of any political scope about Vietnam since Graham Greene wrote The Quiet American." — Harper's

"You must read The Quiet American . . . it explains our past, in Southeast Asia, trains light on our present in many places, and perhaps foreshadows our future if we don't take heed. . . . A heartrending romance . . . Haunting and profound." —All Things Considered, NPR

"As near a masterpiece as anything else I have ever read in the last twenty years." — Daily Express