The Quiet American- Graham Greene

****/*****                                                                                                                             Novel

The Quiet American
Graham Greene

            Story is set in Saigon, Vietnam of early 1950s. Thomas Fowler, middle aged (whose paunch has begun to make buttoning of his trousers difficult), dyed-in-the-wool cynic and a seasoned journalist covering the war in Vietnam for his British paper, is comfortably settled in the city with his Annamite mistress Phuong. Young, beautiful, obedient Phuong and the war-ravaged Indo-China territory provide Fowler a soothing company and shelter away from the suffocating confines of a failing marriage back at home, from which his wife is not willing to release him. This inner peace of Fowler's, in the tumultuous war-ravaged country, is shattered when Alden Pyle, a young American, arrives in the city and falls in love with Fowler's girl. Pyle is an idealist and sees the world through the eyes of the authors he admires. He sees everything as good or bad. Shades of grey do not exist in his world. He would not use guile in any of his dealing with men. Truth and right would eventually win. Being honest and upright are the greatest human virtues, which cannot be bartered however large may be the gains. And ironically, he is on a clandestine mission to Vietnam. He is allegedly working for American Economic Aid Mission, but the real purpose of the later is to empower a Third Force in Vietnam, against the French backed government and its enemies, the communist Vietminh.
            Against the backdrop of mass tragedy, in a nation at war with itself and with foreign powers, Greene expertly narrates the unfolding drama of misery afflicting individual human hearts, vicissitudes born of love and its forsaking. He presents a bewitching portrait of two contrasting personalities, the 'dry as a bone' pragmatist Fowler and the bookishly optimist Pyle. This is one of the most beguiling and nuanced portraits of innocence I have yet come across in literature. With help of some ingenious plots Greene brings out the harm that a sincerely harmless person may wreak on fellow humans. 'I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused,' says Fowler, narrator of this tale, about Pyle. The book has Greene's trademark crisp prose, terse narration, sharp dialogues, understated human emotions in face of momentous turmoil and above all a very refined sardonic humour. This is surely one of Greene's best, a 'tour de force', to be read, savoured and enjoyed many times in a life-time.

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