The Quiet American

The Quiet American is a 1955 novel by Graham Greene. Set during the era of French colonialism in Vietnam, it tells the story of an English journalist who is caught in a love triangle with an American intelligence agent and a Vietnamese woman. Greene had published over a dozen novels before The Quiet American and was considered one of the most influential American authors during his career. He drew on his own experiences as a war correspondent in French Indochina (now Cambodia, Laos, and parts of Vietnam and China) while writing the novel. The Quiet American has been adapted twice as a film and once as a radio drama.

This guide uses the 1967 First Modern Library Edition.

Note: The source text uses names for Vietnamese cities that are no longer in use today. These include Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), Tanyin (Tây Ninh)

Plot Summary

Thomas Fowler is an English journalist who is covering the war for independence in Vietnam between the French colonial army and the Viet Minh communist forces. The narrative of the novel unfurls in a nonlinear fashion. As the novel begins, Fowler discovers that an acquaintance, an American named

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