The Quiet American
Graham Greene • 1955
Devastation Rating
Vietnam politics colonialism moral failure
Our Take
Alden Pyle arrives in Vietnam with a theory and enough naivety to act on it. Greene predicted American foreign policy in Southeast Asia a decade before it happened. Fowler's cynicism is not wisdom — it is the other way that men avoid responsibility for what they are complicit in.
Appears In
► Colonialism and Its Aftermath — The Wound That Runs Forward ► Espionage — When Loyalty Becomes a Trap ► Vietnam War — The War America Still Cannot Name ► Cold War — The Long Catastrophe of Competing Certainties ► Moral Courage and Its Failure — When Watching Is the Crime ► Race in Britain — The Empire Comes Home
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