The Quiet American

Graham Greene, born on October 2, 1904, in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England, was a prolific British author, playwright, and journalist. Over his six-decade literary career, he published novels, short stories, plays, and essays. Greene’s writing was influenced by his time as a journalist in Vietnam. He began his career in journalism in the early 1920s at Balliol College, Oxford. After leaving the university, he reported from numerous hotspots around the world, including Mexico, Liberia, and Spain, where he covered the Spanish Civil War.

In the early 1950s, Greene went to Vietnam to cover the First Indochina War. Vietnam was then under French colonial rule, and Vietnamese communist forces were fighting for independence. Greene arrived in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in 1951 as a correspondent for The Observer, a British newspaper. His mission was to report on the conflict, but his investigations involved a great deal more than just reporting. One of Greene’s most significant contributions to journalism during his time in Vietnam was his nuanced perspective on the war. He covered not only the military aspects of the conflict but also its social, cultural, and political dimensions. This approach set him apart from many other correspondents of his time, who did not work to understand the human stories behind the headlines.