The Quiet American - Graham Greene

Let me start by saying this is a wonderful piece of short fiction. Thomas Fowler is a British journalist living in Saigon and doing his best to remain independent and indifferent to the French Indo-Chinese War occurring in Vietnam. Already the seeds of America's Vietnam conflict are beginning to be sown as Fowler meets Alden Pyle, an American with the Economic Relief effort. 

Pyle seems naive to the extreme, having read and relied on a text by York Harding, a man who once visited the region for a week and somehow came up with theories on how the entire region could be saved by communism. The simple arrogance of the presumption is completely lost on Pyle, who has found a mission and the blueprint for making a lasting effect on the country. Pyle, intent on this outcome is willing to overlook all the casualties in its wake as a reasonable cost for the desired effect. 

Prior to Pyle arriving, Fowler was living a quiet life of boring cables, opium filled evenings, and the affections of a simple unassuming Vietnamese woman, Phuong, who bides her time with Fowler ostensibly until someone better (unmarried) comes along who can marry her and take her to the west. Pyle sets himself up to be just such a suitor, and Fowler, who was comfortable not facing the inevitable conclusion of his time in the East, has to face his own limitations and fears as an aging man. He ultimately comes to understand that indifference is impossible: "Suffering is not increased by numbers: one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel. I had judged like a journalist in terms of quantity and I betrayed my own principle; I had become as engaged as Pyle, and it seemed to me that no decision would ever be simple again." 

See, there is a ton of stuff packed into this short work! That both Pyle and Phuong are seen through Fowler's lense means that they are ultimately misunderstood and given a flawed presentation in the novel. It's too simple to merely accept them both as naive and simple characters as Fowler does.

5/5 Stars.