The Quiet American

author
Graham Greene

master alert
Graham Greene is unparalleled. If you haven't read him, you must. If you've read some of his work, read the rest. And if you've read the entire oeuvre, read it again—it's worth it. (The Quiet American is particularly great.)

book blurb
"Thirty years after the book's first apearance, the critic Frances FitzGerald could still argue that 'there has been no novel of any political scope about Vietnam since Graham Greene wrote The Quiet American.' It was published in 1955, after Greene had made several visits to Indochina as a journalist covering the French war there. His experiences provided the material for the story of Fowler, the world-weary British Journalist, and Pyle, the idealistic and naïve "quiet American" who blindly applies his academic theories to a political situation he doesn't quite grasp. The relentless struggle of the Vietminh guerrillas for independence and the futility of the French gestures of resistance become inseparable meshed with the personal and moral dilemmas of these two men and the Vietnamese woman they both love."

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

"No serious writer of [the twentieth] century has more thoroughly invaded and shaped the public imagination than Graham Greene."
—Time

"Written with Greene's great technical skill and imagination."
—The New York Times

"A continuously intriguing piece of storytelling....Greene has brought into vivid relief...the fearful price of innocence — and has shown that behind innocence there lurk unconscious arrogance and a self-righteous streak of moral blindness."
—The Atlantic

"The best novel written about the war in Indo-China."
—Chicago Sun-Times

"A superb accomplishment....[Greene combines] the psychological novel with the novel of violence and suspense, a rare accomplishment for any writer."
—Saturday Review Syndicate

"Unless I am very much mistaken, The Quiet American is as near a masterpiece as anything else I have ever read in the last twenty years." —Daily Express (London)
:
"Greene at his best. The hand of the master is clearly revealed in the structure of the novel, which rises to a magnificent climax."
—New Leader

some other things this author has written
Novels
The Man Within (1929)
The Name of Action (1930)
Rumour At Nightfall (1931)
Stamboul Train aka The Orient Express (1932)
It's a Battlefield (1934)
England Made Me aka The Shipwrecked (1935)
The Bear Fell Free (1935)
Journey without Maps (1936)
A Gun for Sale aka This Gun For Hire (1936)
Brighton Rock (1938)
The Confidential Agent (1939)
The Lawless Roads aka Another Mexico (1939)
The Heart of the Matter (1940)
The Power and the Glory aka The Labyrinthine Ways (1940)
The Ministry of Fear (1943)
The Little Train (1946)
The Third Man (1950)
The Little Fire Engine (1950)
The End of the Affair (1951)
The Little Horse Bus (1952)
The Quiet American (1955)
Loser Takes All (1955)
Our Man in Havana (1958)
A Burnt-Out Case (1960)
The Comedians (1966)
Travels with My Aunt (1969)
The Honorary Consul (1973)
The Human Factor (1978)
Doctor Fischer of Geneva: or The Bomb Party (1980)
Monsignor Quixote (1982)
Getting to Know the General (1984)
The Tenth Man (1985)
The Captain and the Enemy (1988)

Collections
Babbling April (poems) (1925)
Nineteen Stories: Passion, Suspense and Violence (1947)
A Sense of Reality: A Collection of Short Stories (1950)
Twenty-One Stories (1954)
May We Borrow Your Husband?: And Other Comedies of the Sexual Life (1967)
The Portable Graham Greene (1973)
Selected Works (1977)
Collected Short Stories (1987)
The Last Word: And Other Stories (1990)
The End of the Party (1992)
The Collected Plays (2002)
Complete Short Stories (2005)

Non fiction
British Dramatists (1942)
Why Do I Write: An Exchange of Views between Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene and V.S. Pritchett (1948) (with Elizabeth Bowen and V S Pritchett)
In Search of a Character: Two African Journals (1961)
Collected Essays (1969)
A Sort of Life (1971)
Pleasure Dome: The Collected Film Criticism 1935-40 (1972)
Lord Rochester's Monkey: Being the Life of John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester (1974)
Ways of Escape (1980)
The Life of Graham Greene. Volume One: 1904 - 1939 (1989) (with Sherry Norman)
Reflections 1923 - 1988 (1990)
Fragments of Autobiography (1991)
Yours Etc.: Letters to the Press, 1945-89 (1991)

Plays
The Potting Shed (1957)
The Return Of A.J. Raffles (1975)