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The Quiet American is a short novel (180 pages), but it packs a punch, both emotionally and politically. A masterful study of male rivalry and political engagement set in 1950s Vietnam, it pits against each other two very different men: Thomas Fowler, a jaded, world-weary, ageing British war correspondent, and Alden Pyle, an earnest and idealistic American who has just arrived in Vietnam to work at the Economic Aid Mission and hardly knows anything about the country except what he's read in a book. Early on in the story, in a scene whose absurdity belies the increasingly dark tone of the rest of the book, Pyle informs Fowler that he's in love with Fowler's mistress Phuong and intends to have her for his bride, since, let's face it, he has more to offer her than does Fowler. Amazingly, Pyle then goes on to insist on being Fowler's friend, seemingly unaware that the other man sees him as a rival and doesn't really want anything to do with him. So their stories keep weaving in and out of each other, until Pyle is found dead. The question is, who killed him, and why?

The Quiet American is first and foremost a splendid portrait of an unlikely friendship between two men who are not what they seem. Adulterous, opium-smoking Fowler doesn't come across as very likeable at first, but as the story develops, the reader discovers that his cynical exterior hides an all too human heart. For his part, Pyle, whose innocence and naïveté seem delightfully absurd at first, turns out to be a dangerous character who is playing with forces he doesn't understand, with potentially dire consequences for many people. Greene expertly handles the strange relationship between the two men, adding just the right amount of wonder and bitterness to the proceedings. At the same time, though, he tells a story that is much bigger than a bizarre love triangle. Having been a foreign correspondent in Indochina in the early 1950s, Greene obviously knew Vietnam quite well, and it shows in his depiction of the country, a wonderfully vivid place where Communist forces are fighting for freedom, French bureaucrats are trying desperately to hang on to their colonial dreams and war correspondents like Fowler are not sure whether to remain impartial observers or to get involved in the fracas. In spare, minimalist prose, Greene shows what happened in Vietnam when the Americans got involved, and what generally happens when well-intending but badly-informed people start messing in other countries' political problems -- a lesson which over fifty years later still seems frightfully topical. Along the way, he tackles such universal themes as goodness versus selfishness, action versus laissez faire, moral conflict, and the nature of love. Initially, the writing may seem a little too detached to move the reader, but the carefully plotted intrigue, well-drawn explosive atmosphere and powerful ending more than make up for it, making this a well-told story with a message which hasn't lost any of its power in the half century since it was written.