I re-read this novel by mistake. I wanted to read The Constant Gardener, but instead I got confused and started this one... again. I realised on the first page that I had already read it, but as I had liked it, I read it again.

There is a war in Indochina. It will be -presumably- a stop to communism. Fowler, a British journalist, makes of non-commitment his only flag. He is more concerned about wanting Phuong to stay with him in spite of him not being divorced from his wife back in England.

And here comes Pyle, an American young man who is helping with "plastic", to support a third force, ellusive and unspecified, which will eventually bring democracy to the country after the war.