The Quiet American (Graham Greene, 1955)

An English reporter living in Viet Nam during time of fighting between French and Vietnamese (Communist) is the narrator. Mid-1950s. The narrator had pretty much "gone native," living with a local woman, regularly taking opium, etc. An American arrives as an economic attache; actually doing undercover work for a "third force" - an unreliable local warlord - in an effort to stave off the Communists. American steals girl from narrator (to his great disappointment) and saves the narrator's life when they are stranded in open country. Narrator recognizes unreliability of naive American, could be said to have a hand in the American's assassination. But he does get his woman back.

I liked this a lot. Never read anything by Graham Greene before and don't know a thing about him. The introduction to this edition of the book said he grew up in the public school tradition of service and would have believed in Britain's historic international role. I'll read more. His bio is here. The book gave one man's take on the situation in Vietnam.

I was listening to a song by Nanci Griffith, who I like a lot, at the gym this evening. She is active in Vietnam veterans' matters. (In fact, during her appearance at the Alaska Folk Festival in 2006, it was reported by one Carol Gales that she yakked about that type of thing too much and didn't sing enough.) Anyway, she mentions the name of this book and the author a couple times in one of her songs about Indochina.