Graham Greene

This novel is a study of New World hope and innocence set in an Old World of violence. The scene is Saigon in the violent years when the French were desperately trying to hold their footing in the Far East. The principal characters are a skeptical British journalist, his attractive Vietnamese mistress, and an eager young American sent out by Washington on a mysterious mission.

En route to London after being released from a mental institution, Stephen Neale stops at a seemingly innocent village fair, after which he finds himself caught in the web of a sinister underworld with possible Nazi connections.