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The Quiet American

by Graham Greene

Summary

Set in Vietnam in the 1950s, during the last days of French colonial rule, THE QUIET AMERICAN was based partly on Graham Greene's own experiences in Vietnam as a correspondent for the London Times. The book's narrator is an English journalist named Fowler who lives in Saigon with his Vietnamese mistress, Phuong, but is unable to convince his Catholic wife to grant him a divorce. Fowler meets Pyle, a young American intelligence agent who talks of setting up a "third force" to oppose both the colonial powers and the Communist rebels. Fowler's growing conviction that Pyle is orchestrating a campaign of terror coincides with the discovery that Phuong has betrayed him with Pyle. When THE QUIET AMERICAN was published in the US in 1956, its implication that Americans were involved in terrorism against the Vietnamese was met with outrage. As years have passed, however, the book has come to be seen as a prescient and probing look at a volatile situation that paved the way for America's tragic involvement in the Vietnam War.

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Media Reviews

"A continuously intriguing piece of storytelling....[Greene] has brought into vivid relief a universal human problem-the fearful price of innocence-and has shown that behind innocence there lurk unconscious arrogance and a self-righteous streak of moral blindness."    -- C. J. Rolo

   -- Atlantic Monthly

"As in all of Mr. Greene's novels, it concerns the moral life. Pyle, the innocent, dangerous American, and Fowler, the sophisticated, safe Englishman, represent, behind the polish of Mr. Greene's art, the vices and virtues of a morality play. And it is here that Mr. Greene finally fails....The work does not come to terms with its own burden. It takes refuge in easy ways out."    -- William Clancy

   -- Commonweal

"I found this novel superb, the sort of prize for devotion to duty that comes to a reviewer once in several years. Who else writing to-day has this grasp of a compelling idea, this light yet grave handling of words, this quiet, deadly accuracy of phrase? Attack the book at its weakest points and nothing essential falls."    -- Norman Shrapnel

   -- Manchester Guardian

"As a highly skilled work of fiction by one of our major literary craftsmen, 'The Quiet American' is a finer achievement than either of Graham Greene's two previous novels....What gives [the book] its stature, in spite of its weaknesses, is more than the mastery of story-telling it so nonchalantly displays."    -- John Lehmann

   -- New Republic

"Reading a bad book is like watching a poor fight. Instead of being caught up in it, you try to figure out what is the matter....[This is a] nasty little plastic bomb."    -- A. J. Liebling

   -- New Yorker

"'The Quiet American,' whatever else one may say about it, is an exciting book. It is also the best novel for many years-certainly since 'The Power and the Glory'-by one of the best living English novelists."    -- D. O'Donnell

   -- New Statesman

"Mr. Greene has always been a master of suspense, and the particular excellence of 'The Quiet American' lies in the way in which he builds up the situation finally to explode the moral problem which for him lies at the heart of the matter. In so doing he uses with complete mastery something of the method of the detective-story writer, only at the end he exposes, as well as a murderer, a problem of far-reaching significance. The effect is powerful and long-lasting, and it is by this effect that the whole book must be judged."

   -- Times Literary Supplement

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Published date: 1991
Size: 5.25 x 7.75 inches
Weight: 0.3 pounds

Publisher's Notes

The relentless struggle of the Vietminh guerrillas for independence and the futility of the French gestures of resistance become inseparably meshed with the personal and moral dilemmas of these two men and the Vietnamese woman they both love.

Other Editions

• Hardcover Reprint - Random House Inc (1992) - from $6.75
• Paperback Reissue - Penguin USA (2002) - from $1.00

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