*The Quiet American, by Graham Greene

Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition (2004)

9780143039020

originally published 1955


The Quiet American is a somewhat metaphorical novel which  should be read in the context of the political scene in Vietnam before 1954.  At the time in which this novel is set, the Vietnamese are still under French colonial rule.  The nationalists (the Communist Vietminh), have been fighting to take back the country for some time under the leadership of a returned Ho Chi Minh, and the French are losing their bid to keep control.

Reporting the conflicts in Vietnam for the British press is Thomas Fowler, who has been in Saigon now for some time.  Fowler, who narrates the story, claims to be neutral: he says that he does not take sides, get involved or make judgments, but rather just reports the news when the government will let him. He’s a self-proclaimed isolationist.  He lives with Phuong, a young Vietnamese girl, but is still married back home in England, although he’s asked for a divorce from his Catholic wife who continues to refuse him. Into Fowler’s world comes Alden Pyle, “Quiet American” of the title.  Pyle is a Harvard Grad, and is in the country to work ostensibly under the Economic Attaché.  He has adopted the ideas of a theorist named York Harding about  necessity of intervention in Asia, and sees the need to establish a so-called “third force” in Vietnam to replace both French colonialism and the Communists. He has already settled on a General Thé, the leader of an  insurgency group called the Caodists, who has “taken to the hills to fight both sides, the French, the Communists…” (17). Pyle envisions Thé taking power and  settling Vietnam into being a democratic country and helping to prevent the Communist dominoes from falling. According to Pyle, the Vietnamese want to live in a democracy.   While Fowler finds Pyle to be a bit naïve, and argues that most peasants don’t sit in their huts at night thinking about democracy and ideologies, he has to start taking him more seriously when Pyle decides he wants Phuong for himself.  Fowler knows that the younger, more affluent American has more to offer Phuong in material terms, but he’s become comfortable with the way things are. Pyle’s very existence in Saigon threatens Fowler in ways he never realized. But then again, Fowler is the narrator of this story, so beware.


Solid analyses of this novel are everywhere to be found on the Internet and in several books, so I won’t even attempt to go there, but interestingly, even though he was writing in 1955, Greene was able to foresee the quagmire caused by US intervention in Vietnamese politics.  Today one could easily apply his novel to the dangers of intervening in the politics of the Middle East or in the “third world” in general.

It’s an amazing book, definitely one not to be missed. Greene is one of those writers whose works you cannot forget once you’ve read them. Highly recommended and one of my favorites for this year.