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The Quiet American by Graham Greene & Robert Stone: Complexities of Foreign Affairs and Morality by Graham Greene & Robert Stone
172 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 27, 2021
About the author
Graham Greene
717 books6,293 followersHenry Graham Greene was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century.
Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivienne Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland. William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety".
Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivienne Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland. William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety".
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November 3, 2025The Quiet American by Graham Greene
As I read it
by Nguyen Chanh
Thomas Fowler, a British veteran journalist, started covering the French Indo-China war in the early 1950s when it was steadily gaining momentum in northern Vietnam, not long before the fall of Dien Bien Phu and the country’s partition.
Fowler was in his fifties and separated from his wife. He never expected he’d fall in love with an eighteen-year-old Vietnamese girl. “It had been a long and frustrating courtship,” he recalled, because Phương was looked after by a supercilious elder sister who was intent on a European marriage for her but for a married man. “I might have been a young and inexperienced fool for all I found to say, he said, “and never dreamed that four months later she would be lying beside me, a little out of breath, laughing as though with surprise because nothing had been quite what she expected.”
But everything changed when Alden Pyle, a thirty-year-old American arrived. A Harvard graduate, Pyle officially worked with the Economic Mission but was believed to be trusted with special unspecified assignments. He made no secret, though, of his worship of York Harding, once his professor at Harvard, and of his own desire to carry out Harding’s theory- that what Vietnam needed was a Third Force that would fight both communism and colonialism. Both men rapidly became friends and Pyle took no time to confess to Fowler that he fell in love with Phương as soon as he met her and suggested that they asked her to “choose between us.” “That’s fair enough,”he said. “I wouldn’t never come between a man and his wife.”
Pyle then proposed to Phương, in Fowler’s presence, and via Fowler acting as an interpreter because he didn’t speak French and she didn’t speak English. But Phuong said No and Pyle promised not to see her anymore and that he would get a transfer when he finished his tour. He nevertheless made a request: “Only please don’t leave her, Thomas.”
The incident left Fowler abashed and he wrote a long letter to his wife, a devout Catholic, asking again for a divorce, explaining that “[he loved] someone very much, [that they had] lived together for more than two years” and that “to lose her [would] be, for [him], the beginning of death.” The letter proved to be a fatal mistake. When his wife again refused to divorce, Fowler thought it was safer to lie to everyone, saying that there was still hope. When they found out Phương left him for Pyle without warning or explanation.
Soon after Fowler lost her, a series of explosions occurred in a crowded place, before a tremendous one, in the very center of the capital in the middle of the day, caused a large number of casualties including women and children. Confronted with Fowler, Pyle admitted the misdeeds were his Third Force allies’, even though he pretended they had blundered. Fowler half-heartedly agreed, when a Viet Minh agent got in touch with him through his faithful assistant and informer asking him to help “restrain” Pyle and promising they would act “as gently as the situation allows.” Fowler invited Pyle to dinner that night at the Vieux Moulin, and Pyle’s body was found in the river by the bridge the following day. Phương was back the same day.
The novel abounds with humor, as when Pyle proposed to Phương, or when Granger, an American journalist, addressed Fowler: “I don’t like you … but you talk English. A kind of English.” Or when Pyle said his father was a kind of authority and that “[people] consulted him,”and Phương’s sister gleefully asked: “About health? Is he a doctor?” Fowler didn’t make an attempt to be humorous, though, when Pyle asked him if Phương loved him and he answered: “Not like that. It’s not in their nature”: “ Love is a Western word.” Or when he told Pyle that Phương would “suffer from childbirth and hunger and cold and rheumatism, but she’d never suffer like we do from thoughts.”
But it was not Fowler’s fault if Miss Hai and Mr. Hung or Hanh’s names were spelled Hei and Heng.
As I read it
by Nguyen Chanh
Thomas Fowler, a British veteran journalist, started covering the French Indo-China war in the early 1950s when it was steadily gaining momentum in northern Vietnam, not long before the fall of Dien Bien Phu and the country’s partition.
Fowler was in his fifties and separated from his wife. He never expected he’d fall in love with an eighteen-year-old Vietnamese girl. “It had been a long and frustrating courtship,” he recalled, because Phương was looked after by a supercilious elder sister who was intent on a European marriage for her but for a married man. “I might have been a young and inexperienced fool for all I found to say, he said, “and never dreamed that four months later she would be lying beside me, a little out of breath, laughing as though with surprise because nothing had been quite what she expected.”
But everything changed when Alden Pyle, a thirty-year-old American arrived. A Harvard graduate, Pyle officially worked with the Economic Mission but was believed to be trusted with special unspecified assignments. He made no secret, though, of his worship of York Harding, once his professor at Harvard, and of his own desire to carry out Harding’s theory- that what Vietnam needed was a Third Force that would fight both communism and colonialism. Both men rapidly became friends and Pyle took no time to confess to Fowler that he fell in love with Phương as soon as he met her and suggested that they asked her to “choose between us.” “That’s fair enough,”he said. “I wouldn’t never come between a man and his wife.”
Pyle then proposed to Phương, in Fowler’s presence, and via Fowler acting as an interpreter because he didn’t speak French and she didn’t speak English. But Phuong said No and Pyle promised not to see her anymore and that he would get a transfer when he finished his tour. He nevertheless made a request: “Only please don’t leave her, Thomas.”
The incident left Fowler abashed and he wrote a long letter to his wife, a devout Catholic, asking again for a divorce, explaining that “[he loved] someone very much, [that they had] lived together for more than two years” and that “to lose her [would] be, for [him], the beginning of death.” The letter proved to be a fatal mistake. When his wife again refused to divorce, Fowler thought it was safer to lie to everyone, saying that there was still hope. When they found out Phương left him for Pyle without warning or explanation.
Soon after Fowler lost her, a series of explosions occurred in a crowded place, before a tremendous one, in the very center of the capital in the middle of the day, caused a large number of casualties including women and children. Confronted with Fowler, Pyle admitted the misdeeds were his Third Force allies’, even though he pretended they had blundered. Fowler half-heartedly agreed, when a Viet Minh agent got in touch with him through his faithful assistant and informer asking him to help “restrain” Pyle and promising they would act “as gently as the situation allows.” Fowler invited Pyle to dinner that night at the Vieux Moulin, and Pyle’s body was found in the river by the bridge the following day. Phương was back the same day.
The novel abounds with humor, as when Pyle proposed to Phương, or when Granger, an American journalist, addressed Fowler: “I don’t like you … but you talk English. A kind of English.” Or when Pyle said his father was a kind of authority and that “[people] consulted him,”and Phương’s sister gleefully asked: “About health? Is he a doctor?” Fowler didn’t make an attempt to be humorous, though, when Pyle asked him if Phương loved him and he answered: “Not like that. It’s not in their nature”: “ Love is a Western word.” Or when he told Pyle that Phương would “suffer from childbirth and hunger and cold and rheumatism, but she’d never suffer like we do from thoughts.”
But it was not Fowler’s fault if Miss Hai and Mr. Hung or Hanh’s names were spelled Hei and Heng.
February 25, 2026
I found this an interesting read. I traveled to Vietnam in 2019. They call it the American War, after the French occupation. They have to be much more practical than Americans, but then doesn’t everyone.
Is it a
The art of war?
The ends justifies the means?
Love conquers all?
All is fair in love and war?
Maybe even Crime and Punishment?
Men are the same everywhere?
Is it a
The art of war?
The ends justifies the means?
Love conquers all?
All is fair in love and war?
Maybe even Crime and Punishment?
Men are the same everywhere?
February 3, 2023
Greene's novel of a British War Correspondent in Saigon has a web of love affairs and ulterior motives. In many ways, it is a study of human desires - desires for love, security, understanding among them - and the fallen habits of man - the appetites and pleasures which come due to the search for the natural desires. I need to reread it again some time, to dive deeper in to Fowler's rationale. Greene discusses skepticism, and the loneliness which accompanies the absence of God. Fowler's only solace can come from death, and yet he seems afraid to die.
Anyways, I digress. A very good book, not a long read either.
Anyways, I digress. A very good book, not a long read either.
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