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The Quiet American (Viking Critical Library)
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Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Author: Graham Greene
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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Our Price: $12.06
You Save: $ 5.94 ( 33% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Author: Graham Greene
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Average Customer Rating:
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The Quiet American (Viking Critical Library) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780140243505
ISBN: 014024350X
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 544
Publication Date: 1996-01-01
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780140243505
ISBN: 014024350X
Label: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 544
Publication Date: 1996-01-01
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Editorial Review of The Quiet American (Viking Critical Library)
Customer Reviews of The Quiet American (Viking Critical Library)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Prescient novel with great critical essays attached
Review: An excellent edition of Graham Greene's The Quiet American because it combines this prescient novel with superb contextual documents about the Vietnam War, Greene's role in it, and a wide-range of critical essays about the novel. It's stunning how Greene in 1952 was able to see what would happen and why in Vietnam, but the novel speaks as well to us today about the dangers of imposing our own ideologies on other cultures and being blind to human suffering. It also shows the dangers of sterotyping and objectifying the "other."
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A premonition about Vietnam
Review: To read The quiet American now, some thity years after the end of a sensless and disastrous war, gives us an unexpected vision of Vietnam, its people and the United States involvement in that war. Furthermore, it's inevitable to think of the present war in Iraq.
It's no news that Graham Green is a magnificent fiction writer, witty, sometimes funny, always capable of digging deep into historical situations and different people habits and values (The power and the glory and The comedians are very good examples)but in the qiet American he is also a cruel reporter and a skillful creator of full size human characters.
The Viking Critica Library edition has also an enormoues value for the inclusion of literary reviews from the first edition of the book and the opinons of experts both in literature and Vietnam history.
Javier Olmedo,
Mexico City, Mexico
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Prophecy Hidden As A Novel
Review: One of the most amazing things that jumped out at me about Graham Greene's novel, "The Quiet American," was the copyright date. 1955. How many years BEFORE America found itself mired in the nightmare of the Vietnam War?
Why didn't anyone in power or policy see the warning in this novel?
I'm still reading through all the extra material but I feel confident enough about the book itself and what I have read that I can definitely give this book five stars (the novel is over a third of this book).
Alden Pyle, Greene's "quiet American," clearly represents America in this cruel world. He's young, strong, sure of his beliefs and willing to act on his own convictions--but in this world of deceit and corruption, he doesn't have a chance. And quite a few people have said the same thing about America in Vietnam.
Beyond the deeper meaning of the setting and story (more powerful since it was written BEFORE the USA got stuck in Nam), the characters really make for some fiction. Pyle, the clear-eyed Yank looking to do good in Indo-China, runs into the narrator Fowler, an opium-smoking old Brit journalist who's seen too much and forgot how to care about anything--except the Vietnamese woman who comes between them.
At the end of the 1970s, "Apocalypse Now" got a lot of kudos for its dark humor ("I love the smell of napalm in the morning!") but Greene had written along those lines in the 1950s: Fowler rides along on a bomb run and, after a village is blown to bits, the pilot points out the beautiful sunset on a nearby river.
Up to this point, my favorite Greene novel had been "The End of the Affair," but now it's "The Quiet American." I also want to see the Michael Caine movie they made a couple years back.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A fine novel of political scope about Vietnam
Review: Into the intrigue and violence of Indo-China comes a young, idealistic and quiet American called Pyle who is employed in the Economic Aid Mission. He is sent there to promote democracy through a mysterious Third Force. But his naïve optimism about democracy starts to cause deaths and his friend the cynical British foreign correspondent Thomas Fowler finds it hard to stand aside and watch. As Fowler intervenes, he wonders whether it is for the sake of politics or for his love for the young Phuong.
Commissioned during the 1950s to write an article on guerrilla warfare in Malaya, Graham Greene stopped off in Vietnam to visit a friend, and soon fell under the spell of Indo-China. This novel is a result of his love for the country, inspired by his experiences there. Although the political situation has changed dramatically, The Quiet American continues to reflect accurately and powerfully the problems of war and the people involved in it.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: critical edition
Review: If you plan to buy this book by all means get this edition. The novel is very readable and Greene is a real wordsmith. The thing is this edition has news articles by the author about Indochina,
critical reviews (the good and the bad), interviews with Ho Chi Minh and American generals, a plot summary of the film and documents about the war. It also has topics for discussion or school papers. The text is less than 200 pages and readable so there is time to read the additional material. This book has the last chapter first such that you know the final result and the rest is leading up to the events in the first chapter. It is a gimmick but it works. I had to re-read the first chapter when I finished; couldn't help it. Find this edition, Viking Critical Library.
Review Summary: Prescient novel with great critical essays attached
Review: An excellent edition of Graham Greene's The Quiet American because it combines this prescient novel with superb contextual documents about the Vietnam War, Greene's role in it, and a wide-range of critical essays about the novel. It's stunning how Greene in 1952 was able to see what would happen and why in Vietnam, but the novel speaks as well to us today about the dangers of imposing our own ideologies on other cultures and being blind to human suffering. It also shows the dangers of sterotyping and objectifying the "other."
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A premonition about Vietnam
Review: To read The quiet American now, some thity years after the end of a sensless and disastrous war, gives us an unexpected vision of Vietnam, its people and the United States involvement in that war. Furthermore, it's inevitable to think of the present war in Iraq.
It's no news that Graham Green is a magnificent fiction writer, witty, sometimes funny, always capable of digging deep into historical situations and different people habits and values (The power and the glory and The comedians are very good examples)but in the qiet American he is also a cruel reporter and a skillful creator of full size human characters.
The Viking Critica Library edition has also an enormoues value for the inclusion of literary reviews from the first edition of the book and the opinons of experts both in literature and Vietnam history.
Javier Olmedo,
Mexico City, Mexico
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Prophecy Hidden As A Novel
Review: One of the most amazing things that jumped out at me about Graham Greene's novel, "The Quiet American," was the copyright date. 1955. How many years BEFORE America found itself mired in the nightmare of the Vietnam War?
Why didn't anyone in power or policy see the warning in this novel?
I'm still reading through all the extra material but I feel confident enough about the book itself and what I have read that I can definitely give this book five stars (the novel is over a third of this book).
Alden Pyle, Greene's "quiet American," clearly represents America in this cruel world. He's young, strong, sure of his beliefs and willing to act on his own convictions--but in this world of deceit and corruption, he doesn't have a chance. And quite a few people have said the same thing about America in Vietnam.
Beyond the deeper meaning of the setting and story (more powerful since it was written BEFORE the USA got stuck in Nam), the characters really make for some fiction. Pyle, the clear-eyed Yank looking to do good in Indo-China, runs into the narrator Fowler, an opium-smoking old Brit journalist who's seen too much and forgot how to care about anything--except the Vietnamese woman who comes between them.
At the end of the 1970s, "Apocalypse Now" got a lot of kudos for its dark humor ("I love the smell of napalm in the morning!") but Greene had written along those lines in the 1950s: Fowler rides along on a bomb run and, after a village is blown to bits, the pilot points out the beautiful sunset on a nearby river.
Up to this point, my favorite Greene novel had been "The End of the Affair," but now it's "The Quiet American." I also want to see the Michael Caine movie they made a couple years back.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A fine novel of political scope about Vietnam
Review: Into the intrigue and violence of Indo-China comes a young, idealistic and quiet American called Pyle who is employed in the Economic Aid Mission. He is sent there to promote democracy through a mysterious Third Force. But his naïve optimism about democracy starts to cause deaths and his friend the cynical British foreign correspondent Thomas Fowler finds it hard to stand aside and watch. As Fowler intervenes, he wonders whether it is for the sake of politics or for his love for the young Phuong.
Commissioned during the 1950s to write an article on guerrilla warfare in Malaya, Graham Greene stopped off in Vietnam to visit a friend, and soon fell under the spell of Indo-China. This novel is a result of his love for the country, inspired by his experiences there. Although the political situation has changed dramatically, The Quiet American continues to reflect accurately and powerfully the problems of war and the people involved in it.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: critical edition
Review: If you plan to buy this book by all means get this edition. The novel is very readable and Greene is a real wordsmith. The thing is this edition has news articles by the author about Indochina,
critical reviews (the good and the bad), interviews with Ho Chi Minh and American generals, a plot summary of the film and documents about the war. It also has topics for discussion or school papers. The text is less than 200 pages and readable so there is time to read the additional material. This book has the last chapter first such that you know the final result and the rest is leading up to the events in the first chapter. It is a gimmick but it works. I had to re-read the first chapter when I finished; couldn't help it. Find this edition, Viking Critical Library.