A тАЬmasterful .┬а.┬а. brilliantly constructed novelтАЭ of love and chaos in 1950s Vietnam (Zadie Smith, The Guardian).
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ItтАЩs 1955 and British journalist Thomas Fowler has been in Vietnam for two years covering the insurgency against French colonial rule. But itтАЩs not just a political tangle thatтАЩs kept him tethered to the country. ThereтАЩs also his lover, Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman who clings to Fowler for protection. Then comes Alden Pyle, an idealistic American working in service of the CIA. Devotedly, disastrously patriotic, he believes neither communism nor colonialism is whatтАЩs best for Southeast Asia, but rather a тАЬThird ForceтАЭ: American democracy by any means necessary. His ideas of conquest include Phuong, to whom he promises a sweet life in the states. But as PyleтАЩs blind moral conviction wreaks havoc upon innocent lives, itтАЩs ultimately his romantic compulsions that will play a role in his own undoing.
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Although criticized upon publication as anti-American, Graham GreeneтАЩs тАЬcomplex but compelling story of intrigue and counter-intrigueтАЭ would, in a few short years, prove prescient in its own condemnation of American interventionism (The New York Times).
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