The Quiet American by Graham Greene

One of Graham Greene's best works. The story is set at the time of the French war against the Viet Cong and tells the story of liberal British journalist Thomas Fowler, his mistress Phuong, and their relationship with American idealist Pyle. The latter is an earnest young man indocrinated with geo-political theory and whose attempts to shape the world to American ideals ends in his own personal tragedy and drastically alters the lives of the other two participants. Written before the US involvement in Vietnam this is a strangely prophetic work and seriously encapsulates the British viewpoint towards that conflict. A beautifully written book and highly recommended.

A really informative and thought provoking read. I loved the depiction of life during the Vietnam war and the numerous moral issues raised were really intriguing.

A dark insightful view of war, espionage and the danger of ideology. The author accepts that no one is purely good or bad but in reality a bit of both. in some ways this is a very cynical perspective but it is closer to ‘real' than most authors get

Two selfish white men
meddling with foreign affairs
and the same woman.

Thomas Fowler, a British journalist, has been covering the French War in Indochina for several years. He has a live-in lover, a young Vietnamese woman named Phuong. Fowler meets Alden Pyle, an American CIA agent. Pyle falls in love with Phuong when he meets her, so part of The Quiet American is a story about relationships.

But a larger part of The Quiet American is the story of good intentions and poor decisions as they relate to war. Both Fowler and Pyle are visitors to Vietnam and both have thoughts about the ongoing war and how it should be resolved. Others in the story are native to Vietnam and they have other ideas about the war and how it should be resolved.

The Quiet American is a brilliant picture of morality and intelligence and how the two combine to determine actions. It's eerily prophetic of the acceleration of the Vietnam War and the inevitability of the inability of intruders to resolve the conflict.