"My fellow journalists calls themselves correspondents; I preferred the title of reporter. I wrote what I saw. I took no action -- even an opinion is a kind of action."
Graham Greene's iconic Vietnam War novel is short, but packs significant character sketching and world building. "The Quiet American" documents the experience of Thomas Fowler, a married British atheist and war correspondent enduring something of a midlife crisis by living with a 20-year-old Vietnamese woman, Phuong, and avoiding a journalistic promotion back in England.
"I shut my eyes and she was again the same as she used to be: she was the hiss of steam, the clink of a cup, she was a certain hour of the night and the promise of rest."
Fowler encounters Alden Pyle, a privileged WASP and idealistic CIA undercover agent who tries to take an academic approach to complex international issues that have very real consequences. Pyle saves Fowler's life and then steals Phuong from him, leading Fowler to make difficult choices about exposing Pyle's connection to domestic terrorist acts in Saigon.
"Everything was as it had been before Pyle came. Rooms don't change, ornaments stand where you place them: only the heart decays."
Often credited as one of the first works to explicitly question the wisdom of intervention in Vietnam, "The Quiet American" is semi-autobiographical and powered by a strong first-person perspective that makes plenty of room for Fowler to examine his feelings on colonialism and his level of involvement in what is happening in the country.
"'Find me an uncomplicated child, Pyle. When we are young we are a jungle of complications. We simplify as we get older.'"
Immediately ascending to the top of the books I've read in 2023, Greene's stellar novel will stay with you well out of proportion with its relative brevity.
"Suffering is not increased by numbers: one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel."
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