The Quiet American

Set in Vietnam during the French colonial war, this novel follows Fowler, a weary English journalist who is living with a young Vietnamese woman. Into his life comes Pyle, an earnest young American aid worker full of confident theories about bringing democracy to Asia. The two men become rivals in love and in outlook. Greene uses their friendship to examine innocence, cynicism and the cost of well-meant interference in other people's countries. It is often read as a prescient warning about foreign intervention.