![]() ![]() His job is not difficult, as much of what he writes is delivered and press conferences and anything controversial is censored before it leaves the country. He has a mistress, Phuong, who cares for his needs. Thomas Fowler has been in the city for two years, working as a reporter for a British newspaper. ![]() ![]() The Quiet American is set in the mid-1950s in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), when the French were still fighting to hang on to their colony and Americans were just barely getting involved in the escalating conflict. It is also the story of a man wrestling with his conscience and his long commitment to neutrality, which is harder to maintain as conditions grow more violent. The woman rarely gets to speak while the two men debate what’s best for her and her country in either deep cynicism (the Briton) or naive idealism (the American). In this brief, devastating novel, two men-one British and one American-fight for the affections of a Vietnamese woman without really considering her wishes or feelings. Graham Greene’s masterly novel, The Quiet American, is the kind of novel that I find impossible not to read as an allegory. ![]()
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