One of Graham Greene's best works. The story is set at the time of the French war against the Viet Cong and tells the story of liberal British journalist Thomas Fowler, his mistress Phuong, and their relationship with American idealist Pyle. The latter is an earnest young man indocrinated with geo-political theory and whose attempts to shape the world to American ideals ends in his own personal tragedy and drastically alters the lives of the other two participants. Written before the US involvement in Vietnam this is a strangely prophetic work and seriously encapsulates the British viewpoint towards that conflict. A beautifully written book and highly recommended.
Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers. He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. *The Power and the Glory* won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and *The Heart of the Matter* won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on *The Fallen Idol* (1948) and *The Third Man* (1949). He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivien Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic".
Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Greene)
