The Quiet American

Resumen del libro

"After dinner I sat and waited for Pyle in my room over the rue Catinat; he said, 'I'll be with you latest by ten,' and when midnight struck I couldn't stay quiet any longer and went down into the street..."

"I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused," Graham Greene's narrator Fowler remarks of Alden Pyle, the eponymous "Quiet American" of what is perhaps the most controversial novel of his career. Pyle is the brash young idealist sent out by Washington on a mysterious mission to Saigon, where the French Army struggles against the Vietminh guerrillas.

As young Pyle's well-intentioned policies blunder into bloodshed, Fowler, a seasoned and cynical British reporter, finds it impossible to stand safely aside as an observer. But Fowler's motives for intervening are suspect, both to the police and himself, for Pyle has stolen Fowler's beautiful Vietnamese mistress.

Originally published in 1956 and twice adapted to film, The Quiet American remains a terrifiying and prescient portrait of innocence at large. This Graham Greene Centennial Edition includes a new introductory essay by Robert Stone.

Biografía del autor

Graham Greene nació en Inglaterra en 1904. Se licenció en Historia en Oxford y tras un inicio profesional como periodista y crítico (y una discreta colaboración con los servicios secretos británicos), se consolidó como uno de los más importantes escritores del siglo XX gracias a títulos como El americano impasible, Nuestro hombre en la Habana y El tercer hombre. William Golding lo describió como el mayor cronista de la ansiedad de su tiempo. Murió en Suiza, donde vivía, en 1991.