Grahame greene biography

1955 novel by Graham Greene

This article is about the 1955 war novel. For other uses, see Quiet American.

The Quiet American is a 1955 novel by English author Graham Greene.

Narrated in the first person by journalist Thomas Fowler, the novel depicts the breakdown of French colonialism in Vietnam and early American involvement in the Vietnam War. A subplot concerns a love triangle between Fowler, an American CIA agent named Alden Pyle, and Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman.

Grahame greene biography

The novel implicitly questions the foundations of growing American involvement in Vietnam in the 1950s, exploring the subject through links among its three main characters: Fowler, Pyle and Phuong. The novel has received much attention due to its prediction of the outcome of the Vietnam War and subsequent American foreign policy since the 1950s.

Greene portrays Pyle as so blinded by American exceptionalism that he cannot see the calamities he brings upon the Vietnamese. The book uses