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Graham Greene

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The Quiet American Paperback – 1 October 2004

by Graham Greene (Author)

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'A great writer who spoke brilliantly to a whole generation. Prophet-like' Alec Guinness

Discover Graham Green's prescient political masterpiece

'The novel that I love the most is The Quiet American' Ian McEwan

Into the intrigue and violence of 1950s Indo-China comes CIA agent Alden Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy through a mysterious 'Third Force'. As his naive optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, finds it hard to stand aside and watch.

But even as he intervenes he wonders why- for the greater good, or something altogether more complicated?

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ZADIE SMITH

**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

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Product details

ASIN : 0099478390
Publisher : VINTAGE ARROW - MASS MARKET; 1st edition (1 October 2004)
Language : English
Paperback : 208 pages
ISBN-10 : 9780099478393
ISBN-13 : 978-0099478393
Dimensions : 12.7 x 1.27 x 19.81 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 14,295 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 1,026 in War Fiction (Books)
- 1,144 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- 1,749 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction

Customer Reviews:
1,097 ratings

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The novel that I love the most is The Quiet American -- Ian McEwan

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

A master of storytelling ― The Times

One of the finest writers of any language ― Washington Post

A superb storyteller - he had a talent for depicting local colour, a keen sense of the dramatic, an eye for dialogue, and skill in pacing his prose ― New York Times

Book Description

'A great writer who spoke brilliantly to a whole generation. Prophet-like' Alec Guinness

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Jean Seifert

The Phoenix

Reviewed in Australia on 11 August 2015

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Set in Vietnam during the 1950's where the author mixes a murder mystery with a cautionary tale of involvement in Vietnam and peppers it with precise and discrete character observations. Fowler, a seasoned and cynical British reporter with a beautiful Vietnamese mistress. Fowler hits opium four times each night in order to face the future. He knows himself and the depth of his own selfishness. “I don’t take sides. I’m not engaged”.
Pyle is the brash young idealist sent out by Washington on a mysterious aids mission to Saigon, where the French Army struggles against the Vietminh guerrillas. Pyle wants so desperately to be liked, so “he was very meticulous about small courtesies.” Phuong, the “love-interest” over whom Pyle and Fowler contend, her name means “Phoenix,” but her delicate body is framed as fragile as a birds.
I have travel Saigon’s sun-splintered streets in a trishaw and in the country, I squint at golden rice fields set against a lush riot of green. I have had drinks at the bar of the Hotel Continental and Nursed those who came back from the horror of war there. Nowhere is one safe. One minute, they ate ice cream in a parlour; the next, they scrape brain matter from there shoes. The phrase "Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?” sums it up for me. This is a fiercely politically engaging work.

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QUIETLY STUNNING...

Reviewed in Australia on 8 March 2014

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This book is quietly stunning. Littered with glimpses and literary visions of beauty and thoughts of powerful effect, this work of written art will move and entertain the reader in ways unseen for generations.

By the end of chapter one, we learn that the American in question (Mr Pyle) is found dead with mud in his lungs under the bridge to Dakow. The one true friend of the deceased - who is also the tale's narrator - is questioned by the local police who speak in an almost incomprehensible combination of French / Vietnamese. He is soon released after identifying the body but even that scene, despite its macabre overtones was hugely entertaining and had strong elements of suspense. Pyle's local girlfriend is compelling in her silence. I look forward to learning more of her (as do the local police, I imagine).

So, is the book a whodunit, then? You will have to read it yourself to find out. But is certainly a classic. It is a book for the ages. It is populated by truth, love, vulgarity and brings home the horrors of war and the effect it has on the human condition. I was going to borrow this book from my local library. I weakened at the last minute and purchased it for my e-reader.

It has turned out to be the best eleven dollars I have spent for ages.

Graham Greene was a genius and has demonstrated his full understanding of what it means to be human.

BFN Greggorio!

2 people found this helpful

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John Morgan

The Quiet American deserves to be a famous novel

Reviewed in Australia on 20 November 2019

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Rightly considered a masterpiece of modern novel writing. Evocation of atmosphere of 1950s Saigon extraordinary. From perspective of culturally deracinated English journalist Thomas Fowler. Plot development extremely compelling. Not only great literature but also very good read.

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Murray Shaw

Vietnam between its wars

Reviewed in Australia on 4 May 2014

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A forceful and intelligent summary of the situation in Vietnam at a time when the French colonial forces were on the brink of defeat by the Vietnamese. At this same time, Graham Greene also intuitively examines the first tentative moves of the United States to exert their control over that poor but heroic nation in what became known to the latter as 'The American War'. The most powerful nation in the world pitted against one of the poorest. But America, with 500,000 of its superbly equipped troops (at its peak) on the ground, complete air mastery including helicopter gunships raining napalm bombs on villages, B52s carpet bombing the cities and countryside as well as spraying the deforestation Agent Orange over the jungles(with its horrific mutilating side-effects) was also defeated by the Vietnamese people fighting for their independence from foreign domination. Casualties included 50,000 Americans and 500 Australians (among others of its allies) killed - but some 3 million Vietnamese died.
Readers would do well to ponder upon the worth of this nation in Graham Greene's excellent book.

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Steve Sherry

Classic Greene

Reviewed in Australia on 4 February 2018

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As a fan of the author, I have an expectation of what to expect from his writing. He is one of the best of the 20th century and this book is a great read. If you enjoy Greene, or just love engaging literature, this book will not disappoint you.

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John Perry

Great Book

Reviewed in Australia on 20 August 2020

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I had heard of Graeme Greene but hadn't read any of his books. Now I realize why he is such a significant author.

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Sandy Alexander

Great read

Reviewed in Australia on 22 January 2019

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A great read. First read in school 45 years ago and is still relevant.
Captures the human spirit as always

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Good Vietnam Primer

Reviewed in Australia on 4 October 2014

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Read while holidaying in Vietnam, so very appropriate. Godd story, well written, was interesting being in some of the spots mentioned, and seeing others in the museum. Reccomended as primer or reading material when visiting in Vietnam,

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David K. Warner

Prescient and Powerful: a masterpiece of engaged fiction

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 June 2018

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In this most prescient of novels, written between 1952 and 1955 - years which cover the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu (although the story itself is set shortly before) - Graham Greene places a three-way love affair against the background of the end of French colonial pretensions in Vietnam (and the emergence of American ones), once again proving himself the master of setting a domestic miniature within a deep political context, while also capturing the topography and ambience of an Asian country gripped by conflict.
The anti-hero journalist, Thomas Fowler, is a typical Greene creation, deeply cynical and world-weary, but also critically honest and self-aware, who through his association with the newly-arrived American special operations officer, Pyle, not only loses his Vietnamese girlfriend to him, but also becomes engaged in the on-going Vietnamese conflict, as his old-world, colonial realism is confronted by the dangerous ambitions of US idealism. In the end, Fowler wins out, in a fashion, but only by conflating his personal travails with the political situation, and becoming the passive collaborator in the murder of his rival, and, in a strange way, friend. It is a multiple love story: the love of two men for one woman; the platonic love between men in a conflict zone; and the love of Graham Greene for Vietnam and its people.
This book is a masterpiece of politically aware and engaged writing that never loses sight of the personal micro-drama within the semi-fictionalized reportage, and while it might be open to criticism as a traditionally occidental story placed in an oriental setting, it rises far above this through its deep exploration of the contradictory approaches within western society to the perceived threat of post-war communist-nationalist liberation movements. And it is the menage-à-trois that stands as a metaphor for this political dynamic, with Foster as the post-imperialist personification of European exploitation, Pyle as the exemplar of American, modernist and democratic idealism, and the girl they both love, Phuoung as the quasi-innocence of Vietnam, the plaything of two powerful men and cultures, both harmful in their differing ways.
Although not one of Greene's Catholic novels this is a profoundly moral work, with the seeming amorality of the protagonist only the mask of the war correspondent, who committed publicly to the neutrality of his trade, becomes engagé once his private beliefs - his love for Phuoung and his respect for her fellow Vietnamese - are assailed by the high-minded, but dangerous, motives of the idealistic Pyle. And it is this revelation of the need for his engagement that stands at the ethical centre of Greene's novel, as Fowler discovers that his love for a woman cannot be only a private concern in the midst of war, because to love is to care, and that requires engagement in the public realm as much as the private.
What Greene shows is how even the most cynical of men must make ethical choices when forced by circumstance, and that such choices come at a cost. Pyle must be stopped, and if that requires Fowler's accommodation with the Communists, who he knows will stop Pyle only through killing him, then that is a necessity in the particular context in which he finds himself. That Fowler benefits through his (in)action, by regaining Phuoung, only burdens him further, for doing what is right, even if rewarded, does not bring happiness in the moral universe known as Greeneland. In the end this wonderfully constructed and focused work of fiction is a salutary warning that has often gone unheeded. Western policy makers with idealistic pretensions towards societies they little understand should read this and take note, although it is doubtful they will.

24 people found this helpful

DAVID BRYSON

PLASTICS AND THE GRADUATE

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 October 2018

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When Dustin Hoffman as the naive young graduate in the film was advised to get into plastics, at least they did not take him down the road to disaster. Greene’s young Harvard man in this story is too green(e) by half, and his innocent credulity makes havoc for more than just himself when he gets out of his depth with his plastics. This novel is set in French colonial Vietnam, shortly before the pivotal fall of Dienbienphu in 1954. As we might expect, the atmosphere is strongly evocative, but with no striving for effect. The patrician Greene has no need for that, and his central narrative of the love triangle blends in effortlessly. It’s really love this time, and the cynical English war correspondent Thomas Fowler is really as completely infatuated with the girl Phuong as the graduate himself, Alden Pyle, is, let loose in Vietnam to spread the American gospel of what Mr Bush used to call demoxy ‘n’ freem. It could all probably be classed as a tragedy of credulity on a big scale: the American attaches have all been inured with the powerful doctrine, even commoner then than now, that the entire world is only waiting to be released into an idealised American universe.

Being a tragedy, the plot is full of ironies. The action may not seem to move very much until the final few pages, when a reader who so much as blinks can miss several developments at one blink. The last development of all may surprise you in a tragedy – it surprised me – but it may be necessary to give the reader’s tormented sense of pity some relief after Greene has described the mother putting some decent covering round what he calls ‘what remained of her baby’ when the bomb has been set off in the public square.

It is an easy read, I found, despite the heart of darkness that beats below the surface. That’s genius for you, I suppose. Is there any sense of justice at the end, or perhaps some feeling of stumbling ineptitude – all disastrous good intentions – being lifted out of people’s path? There might be, but I wouldn’t bank on it. For one thing, if Greene had appended a few more chapters, what would such a new ending have consisted of? Not more of the same, I bet.

7 people found this helpful

Franz Redel

Prophetic novel . Great masterpiece.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 August 2017

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Incredible to think that with this prophetic novel first published in 1955, Greene already predicted the outcome of the Vietnam war. Greene is a master of ethics and theology, and his insights into human nature and motivation are deep and illuminating. Greene is one of the greatest novelists of all time who ironically was never honored with a Nobel prize for literature.

7 people found this helpful

S Riaz

The Quiet American

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 November 2020

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This novel is set during the first Indochina war and growing American involvement in Vietnam, set against the background of French colonialism and witnessed largely through the eyes of Thomas Fowler, a cynical, British journalist. Fowler has been in Vietnam for two years and has been living with Phuong, a young, beautiful, Vietmanese woman, who Fowler loves. Phuong’s sister wants her to marry, but Fowler has a wife in England who is unwilling to divorce him and so he cannot offer her the security that her sister wants.

Change comes with young, naïve Alden Pyle – the ‘Quiet American,’ of the title, who is involved with the CIA. Pyle is free with his opinions; largely based on books by an author named York Harding and his belief in the ‘third force.’ Pyle is extremely earnest and honourable, so, when he meets Phuong and falls immediately in love with her, he is keen to inform Fowler of his intentions. Obviously, Fowler is unwilling to give Phuong up and resentful of Pyle’s belief that Phuong will leave Fowler for him.

The book begins with a death and then the story unfolds, as we learnt what happened to lead to this event and the relationship between the main characters. Phuong remains something of an enigma and it is Fowler’s voice which leads us through the story. Although the opium addicted Fowler is unemotional and dry, he always seems to have Phuong on his mind and to know where she will be at any given time, so the reader is aware his world weariness does not extend to his feelings for Phuong. However, it is also uncertain whether it is own, bleak and lonely future he can see, which leads to his sorrow over the possibility of losing Phuong.

I must admit that this is not a period of history which I know a great deal about. However, Greene was excellent at painting a portrait of people, and places. You can picture Fowler, holed up in his small apartment, smoking endless pipes and wallowing in self-pity, of Pyle’s confident justification, of Phuong’s realistic acceptance of events. Excellent characters and an involving read.

Trevor Cobb

Innocence is a kind of insanity - recommended reading

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 February 2018

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Greene is undoubtedly one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century, his experience as a journalist reflected in his clear, compartmentalised style, with the plot unravelling in a series of cinematic like scenes. The Quiet American is set against the background of the French indo-China war in the early 1950s before the conflict evolved into the Vietnam War. This is a novel about life and death rather than a faithful historical account. The three leading characters are brilliantly compared and contrasted and reflect many of the characteristics of the nations of their birth. Fowler: the British journalist, experienced, cynical, tired, detached. Pyle: the Quiet American, educated, rich, naïve and idealistic. And Phuong: uncomplicated, beautiful but never quite understood by Fowler or Pyle. The Quiet American explores a number of themes including desire, hope and inhumanity, and moral and ethical questions reverberate throughout. The book overflows with insightful quotations; “Innocence is a kind of insanity” “Sooner or later...one has to take sides”... “I wish sometimes you had a few bad motives, you might understand a little more about human beings.” Recommended reading.
Overall 5/5. (Plot 5/5, Characterisation 5/5, Literary Merit 5/5, Readability 4/5.)

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