as a 'pack of lies' and labeled it 'communist propaganda'". Some accused Steinbeck of exaggerating camp conditions to make a political point. Steinbeck had visited the camps well before publication of the novel and argued that their inhumane nature destroyed the settlers' spirit. The Quiet American (1955) by English novelist Graham Greene questions the foundations of growing American involvement in Vietnam in the 1950s. The novel has received much attention due to its prediction of the outcome of the Vietnam War and subsequent American foreign policy since the 1950s. Graham Greene portrays a U.S. official named Pyle as so blinded by American exceptionalism that he cannot see the calamities he brings upon the Vietnamese. The book uses Greene's experiences as a war correspondent for The Times and Le Figaro in French Indochina in 1951–54. The Gay Place (1961) is a set of politically-themed novellas with interlocking plots and characters by American author Billy Lee Brammer. Set in an unnamed state identical to Texas, each novella has a different protagonist: Roy Sherwood, a member of the state legislature; Neil Christiansen, the state's junior senator; and Jay McGown, the governor's speech-writer. The governor himself, Arthur Fenstemaker, a master politician (said to have been based on Brammer's mentor Lyndon Johnson) serves as the dominant figure throughout. The book also includes characters based on Brammer, his wife Nadine, Johnson's wife Ladybird, and his brother Sam Houston Johnson. The book has been widely acclaimed one of the best American political novels ever written. 21st-century novel Since 2000, there has been a surge of Transatlantic migrant literature in French, Spanish, and English, with new narratives about political topics relating to global debt, labor abuses, mass migration, and environmental crises in the Global South. Political fiction by contemporary novelists from the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America directly challenges political leadership, systemic racism, and economical systems. Fatou Diome, a Senegalese immigrant living France since the 1990s, writes political fiction about her experiences on France's unwelcoming borders that are dominated by white Christian culture. The work of Guadeloupean author Maryse Condé also tackles colonialism and oppression; her best known titles are Ségou (1984) and Ségou II (1985). Set in historical Segou (now part of Mali), the novels examine the violent legacies of the slave trade, Islam, Christianity, and colonization (from 1797 to 1860). A bold critic of the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, French novelist Marie Ndiayes won the