The Quiet American

Set in Saigon as French colonial rule in Vietnam breaks down, Graham Greene's 1955 novel is narrated by Thomas Fowler, a cynical British journalist in his fifties covering the French war in Vietnam. Fowler meets Alden Pyle, an earnest young American whom Washington has sent on an unexplained mission, whose views come from the books of a theorist named York Harding rather than any experience of Southeast Asia. A rivalry forms between the two men over Phuong, the young Vietnamese woman who lives with Fowler. Greene drew on his own years as a war correspondent in French Indochina for The Times and Le Figaro, and the novel was adapted for film in 1958 and again in 2002.

It appears on a published list of Barack Obama's favorite books, compiled from his Facebook page and a 2008 New York Times interview. Richard Branson also put it on his list of 65 books to read in a lifetime.