prophetic

The Quiet American
Graham Greene, © 1955
fiction; 192 pages

Written 10 years before our 'conflict' with Vietnam, Graham Greene explores the American psyche of "global police and helper". His impressions and understanding of our ways is so strikingly on the spot that at times you are found just shaking your head.

Taking place in Saigon (modern day Ho Chi Minh City) in southern Vietnam in the early 1950s during the French occupation, the protagonist, an English journalist, runs course with a young and idealist American sent to Saigon to establish a non-Communist frontline against the North. The naïveté of this "quiet American," his simple ideals and incomprehensible behavior to enact his plan, is overtly apparent and smacks the reader almost immediately. Even a younger and less educated audience will realize the aloof and blundering behavior of the American.

This book isn't an outright slam against American principles - Graham is quite subtle in his approach. But it does give us a simple kind of mirror to reflect on our oft bad behavior and meddling abroad. There is also a love-triangle sub plot for those that find the main point of the book too blasé.

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