“The form the novel, with the narrator and his audience both acting as characters, allowed me to mirror the mutual suspicion with which America and Pakistan (or the Muslim world) look at one another,” said author Mohsin Hamid.
Hamid’s recent novel, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” is written as a monologue, a very challenging style since the author has to guarantee credibility while safeguarding against tedium. It is stimulating, unsettling prose, and the novel’s surprise ending is thought-provoking and evocative.
The author’s second novel draws upon his experiences in America: It’s the story of Changez, who is living an immigrant’s dream in pre 9/11 America. He is at the top of his class in Princeton and is snapped up by the elite evaluation firm of Underwood Samson. What drives him are the energy of New York City and the budding romance with a rich classmate, the elegant and beautiful Erica. With Erica, Changez has the promise of entry into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore, Pakistan.
But in the wake of the tragedies of 9/11, Changez’s world is turned upside down. His position in his adopted city is abruptly reversed. His relationship with Erica is eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. Changez starts questioning his own identity. Ethnic profiling and external influences unearth allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love.
A few years later, Changez eloquently relates his American experiences to an American man he meets at a café in Lahore. This American man’s visit to Pakistan could very well do with recent anti-American activities. Is this a conversation between a terrorist and a spy? By now Changez has evolved from a successful, slick and well-settled professional in New York to a bearded, traditionally-dressed, vaguely menacing stranger in Lahore. He accompanies the unnamed American man to the latter’s hotel, building the climax with skilled suspense and trepidation.
Hamid writes, “The Pakistani narrator wonders: Is this just a normal guy or is he a killer out to get me? The American man who is his audience wonders the same. And this allows the novel to inhabit an interior emotional world much like the exterior political world in which it is being read. The form of the novel is an invitation, which if the reader accepts, will in turn implicate the reader–because the reader will be called upon to judge the novel’s outcome and shape it’s ending.”
–Visi Tilak
posted June 11, 2010 at 3:35 am
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posted September 3, 2010 at 7:04 pm
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What do you know about leadership?
Talk Later
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L8er
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posted September 13, 2010 at 7:20 pm
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Cu Soon
posted September 13, 2010 at 7:22 pm
Moin
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Bye Bye
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Hows It Going
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Welcome
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posted September 27, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Good stuff, It might just work, although it seems easier when you have a plan.
What do you know about house?
posted September 27, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Hello There
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Laters
posted September 27, 2010 at 7:27 pm
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Cu Soon
posted September 27, 2010 at 11:00 pm
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Ciao
posted September 27, 2010 at 11:05 pm
Hey
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Me a blog owner too.
posted September 28, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Moin
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L8er
posted September 28, 2010 at 6:44 pm
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myself a blog owner too.
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Bye
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Would you be interested in exchanging blogrolls links with my site?
posted September 30, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Moin
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Buh Bye
posted September 30, 2010 at 6:41 pm
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my homie will put your site on my blogroll.
Good Bye
posted October 1, 2010 at 12:17 am
Hello
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Cu Soon
posted October 1, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Moin
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you cant wait for your next posts.
L8er
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