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pylduck.livejournal.comYesterday, I read Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the author's second novel after Moth Smoke.
I remember seeing The Reluctant Fundamentalist in stores last year though I'm not sure why I didn't pick it up. It was a fast read, and I enjoyed the novel even though the situation of the novel strained my sense of plausibility--the first-person narrator Changez sits down with a stranger at a restaurant in Lahore and tells his story with nary an interruption from the stranger. This novel is really the first I've read that takes as one of its defining moments the events of 9/11. Changez is a native of Pakistan who goes abroad to the United States (Princeton University, to be exact--kind of a coincidence that Min Jin Lee's novel also features Princeton grads) for higher education and works at a financial consulting firm in New York City after graduation. He has a sort-of romantic relationship with a college acquaintance Erica that, like his relationship to America and to his career, takes a sharp turn after 9/11.
I like how the novel is sort of about a foreigner's perspective on the United States, especially of the kind of American arrogance and belligerence that really became palpable after 9/11, but is not really about immigrant culture clash or the issue of assimilation. The novel casts a critical eye on American/capitalist sensibilities by developing the narrator's story around how he became increasingly disillusioned about what his success in America means. Though Changez is in some ways a model minority, he ultimately casts aside the privilege that is his lot in the United States in favor of his homeland in Pakistan.
The novel's title is a bit puzzling, but I think it's meant to be provocative. What kind of "fundamentalist" is Changez? Who is the American stranger he corners at the restaurant for a long evening? The quote from Philip Pullman (author of The Golden Compass) on the back cover highlights the "suspense" of the novel. I wouldn't say this is a "thriller" or "suspense" novel so much as it leaves many things open-ended such that readers are forced to grapple with their interpretations in answering the above questions and others. All in all, I liked the novel quite a bit and will track down Hamid's first novel soon.
I remember seeing The Reluctant Fundamentalist in stores last year though I'm not sure why I didn't pick it up. It was a fast read, and I enjoyed the novel even though the situation of the novel strained my sense of plausibility--the first-person narrator Changez sits down with a stranger at a restaurant in Lahore and tells his story with nary an interruption from the stranger. This novel is really the first I've read that takes as one of its defining moments the events of 9/11. Changez is a native of Pakistan who goes abroad to the United States (Princeton University, to be exact--kind of a coincidence that Min Jin Lee's novel also features Princeton grads) for higher education and works at a financial consulting firm in New York City after graduation. He has a sort-of romantic relationship with a college acquaintance Erica that, like his relationship to America and to his career, takes a sharp turn after 9/11.
I like how the novel is sort of about a foreigner's perspective on the United States, especially of the kind of American arrogance and belligerence that really became palpable after 9/11, but is not really about immigrant culture clash or the issue of assimilation. The novel casts a critical eye on American/capitalist sensibilities by developing the narrator's story around how he became increasingly disillusioned about what his success in America means. Though Changez is in some ways a model minority, he ultimately casts aside the privilege that is his lot in the United States in favor of his homeland in Pakistan.
The novel's title is a bit puzzling, but I think it's meant to be provocative. What kind of "fundamentalist" is Changez? Who is the American stranger he corners at the restaurant for a long evening? The quote from Philip Pullman (author of The Golden Compass) on the back cover highlights the "suspense" of the novel. I wouldn't say this is a "thriller" or "suspense" novel so much as it leaves many things open-ended such that readers are forced to grapple with their interpretations in answering the above questions and others. All in all, I liked the novel quite a bit and will track down Hamid's first novel soon.
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