Books: Greene Hell of Indo-China

THE QUIET AMERICAN (249 pp.)—Graham Greene—Viking ($3.50).

At first glance, Graham Greene seems to have changed his theme. His recent novels—The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair—were religious dramas about the human soul struggling amid gin-or-tea trivialities between salvation and damnation. In his latest novel, he writes of individuals who stand for worlds and nations—the U.S., Britain, Asia—struggling amid blood-and-opium enormities between relative degrees of misrule. Yet in a sense, the heart of the matter is still the same. Whatever uncozy corner Greene chooses for his settings, whether West Africa, Mexico, Indo-China or England,...

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