The book is a monologue of sorts. The setting is a café in Lahore where the protagonist, Changez, sees a visibly uneasy American stranger and starts chatting with him, in an effort to put him at ease. They are seated and place their orders as Changez tells the man about his life as an immigrant in the States, living the American dream.

He is an intelligent 25-year-old who graduated top of his class at Princeton U, then got snatched up by a prestigious NY firm where he achieved spectacular professional success. To crown it all, he found love with the classy Erica, who proceeded to introduce him to the elite circles of Manhattan society. In the midst of this headiness, September 11 occurs and Changez is seized by a strong sense of allegiance to Pakistan.

This was a quick, compelling read. I thoroughly enjoyed the elegant, thought-provoking prose. ( )

A young Pakistani, Changez, relays the story of his life thus far to an American in a cafe in Lahore. Changez describes his love for America, his contempt for America, his love life, his education, career and family. It was thought provoking to hear the story from the Pakistani side of the table and it provided me with perspective, which is never a bad thing. I am still contemplating the very open ending. I can appreciate the effect that an open ending provides, but I need closure. This is a literary piece from beginning to end. From the technique the author uses to tell the story to the names given to the central characters.

Thought provoking and brilliant. ( )

A monologue narrated by Changez to a mysterious American in a Lahore cafe, this is an intriguing book that is difficult to put down. Changez takes his audience through his life from arrival in America for college aged 18, his relationships to Pakistan and America, his relationship with the American, Erica (see what they did there?) and his gradual disenchantment with his Westernised life. The part about his reaction to 9/11 is, I think, supposed to be shocking, and is indeed not presented in isolation, given a strong and complex context. I wasn't shocked, but then again I think I'd maybe be typical of the people that would pick up this book in the first place.

I hope I'm wrong there, as this book does a lot to "normalise" and contextualise the kind of person Changez appears to be, an immigrant trying to settle in a new country, sometimes becoming more American than the Americans, sometimes hopelessly out of his depth and out of place.

The atmosphere of the cafe, probably because I've sat in similar in Tunisia, was beautifully done, and the subtle build-up of menace as we realise that, let alone Changez, we really don't know who this American is, was really well done too.

A compulsive, interesting read. ( )

Very thought provoking. Loved it. I was waiting for something more to happen perhaps. But in the end felt nice overall. ( )

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

So, continuing CCLaP's look this month at the 2007 Booker Prize nominees (both short-list and long), today's review is of the blackly humorous The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, which along with Darkmans by Nicola Barker and On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan are definitely the three most commercially popular titles of all the ones chosen this year by the Booker nominating committee. And to tell you the truth, I have a feeling that today's review is going to be shorter than normal, because of the book itself being shorter than most that I review here -- it's barely 180 pages long, with a whole lot of space between each line of text, and with the story itself being more of a "bildungsroman" (that is, a detailed character study) than a traditional three-act plot-based novel.

The central character being examined, in fact, is a young Pakistani male named Changez, who is using a dinner with an American at a cafe in his native Lahore as an excuse to tell us all about his own experiences in America, in the years both immediately preceding and immediately following September 11th. And in fact this is pretty much the entire reason this wisp of a novel even exists, as a character study of Changez himself, and to show how ultimately he doesn't want anything different than any other twentysomething middle-class yearner out there in the world -- a good job, a little savings, a loving spouse, lots of crap to impress the neighbors. A quiet, unabashed nerd while growing up in the Middle East, Changez ends up receiving a scholarship to attend Princeton; while there he becomes the exact overachiever that so many international students do at American universities; this leads him to an entry-level job at financial firm Underwood Sampson & Co., becoming the latest in a long line of employees whose job is to determine the economic value of the various businesses who hire them on for insurance and liquidation purposes.

And, you know, for the most part I just described the entire plot of this novel, which is why I think today's review is probably going to be shorter than usual; because frankly there's just not that much more to say about The Reluctant Fundamentalist, besides that it's well-written and will produce a chuckle every so often, and can be read by most people from cover to cover in only half a day or so. I mean, it's not bad, that's not the point I'm trying to make; in fact, several elements of the story are very good indeed, such as the extremely dry and formal humor on display, kinda like watching George Bernard Shaw reincarnated as an Arabic geek who happens to also be a middle-class New Yorker. It's just that it's all so...oh, I don't know, just so inconsequential, I guess. It's just one of those books that I suspect three months from now I will have forgotten I ever read in the first place; a story much better suited for reading in The New Yorker during a particularly long bathroom session on a Sunday afternoon, not as a standalone book for 22 freaking dollars that's been nominated for what many consider the most prestigious literary award on the planet.

And then there's that ending, which I didn't care for at all, because it feels just as short and rushed as the rest of the book -- a ten-page coda that basically says, "And then 9/11 happened and Americans became a bunch of a--holes and I decided to move back home and become a terrorist. Um, the end." That, plus the way this information is actually relayed to the audience, feels like a sitcommy gimmick on Hamid's part, the literary equivalent of a pie in the face, a plot twist that is broadcast so far in advance by the author that I was seriously on the lookout for a rimshot when the reveal was finally made. As mentioned, I don't really have too much else to say today about The Reluctant Fundamentalist; it's one of those books perfect for checking out at a library or borrowing from a friend, if one even wants to deal with it at all, certainly not something you want to be blowing 22 bucks on, for as little entertainment as it actually affords. It baffles me, in fact, how such a non-excuse for a book could get nominated for the Booker; but then again, most things about precious academic literary awards baffle me, and I learned a long time ago not to try to make sense of them.

Out of 10: 6.6 ( )

Title: The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Author: Mohsin Hamid
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
# of pages: 208
Start date:9/17/09
End date:9/19/09
Borrowed/bought: borrowed
My rating of the book, F- [worst] to A [best]: B

Description of the book: In the Reluctant Fundamentalist, we meet Changez, a young and talented man who recently graduated from Princeton University to work for a powerful business firm Underwood Samson. Flash forward Changez tells his dining companion about his story in a cafe in Lahore, Pakistan.
Review: I liked his his use of Erica as a metaphor for (Am)Erica. At the end of the book, I still was not sure what the intentions of the author were. Did the American he was dining with murder him? Did he murder the American? Did he and the American strike some kind of deal? I also liked the character Juan Bautista- John the Baptist. This is definitely not a book I would have necessarily chosen for myself but it did open my eyes to international relations. ( )

The title and style of the book are both distractions. If an author is going to use the technique, whereas, you the reader are an active participant in the story, the ending should have more of a bang. There is an attempt at this, but it is a meandering attempt. The protagonist of the story is a Pakastani born student in the United States. He is the top of his class and is recruited by one of the top investment firms as a financial analyst. His job is referred to as a "fundamentalist". He goes into a business and attempts to find its true worth, at times, recommending cutting a business down to its fundamentals. This refers to both his job and eventually his beliefs.The storyline is very choppy as the main character is telling his story to you, a "tourist" in Pakistan. He approaches you and welcomes you to his country and begins to tell the story of his life. It jumps back and forth from the story into "real time". This is too much of a distraction to pull off and seems unnecessary. Eventually, he changes her perspective from America as his new "home", to America as the enemy. This is a direct result of the September 11th attacks and the move by the United States to cause problems in Pakistan-Indian relations. Overall, not a great book, not sure it was on the Booker list. Here are some my favorite quotes though:"Often, as we stood or sat in the midst of an impeccably turned-out crowd, I would observe that she was utterly detached, lost in a world of her own. her eyes were turned inward, and remarks made by her companions would register only indirectly on her face, like the shadows of clouds gliding across the surface of a lake. She smiled when it was brought to her attention that she seemed distant, and said she was, as usual, spacing out. But had come to suspect that hers were not merely the lapses of the absent-minded; no, she was struggling aginst a current that pulled her within herself, and her smile contained the fear that she might slip into her own depths, where she would be trapped, unable to breath." p 86"...I knew even then that she was disappearing into a powerful nostalgia, one from which only she could choose whether or not to return." p113 ( )

This is barely a novel, more a novella in large print. I read it in a couple of sittings. It's written in the style of a monologue by a Pakistani man in a street cafe in Lahore, talking to an American visiting the city for undisclosed reasons. He talks of his time in America, going to college there, falling in love, getting a high powered job. He then goes on to his reaction to 9-11 and how it changes his feelings towards America, and America's treatment of him.

It captures some interesting points about how America sees itself compared to how the world sees America, and raises questions about belonging and identity. I enjoyed the writing in the main, though I did find some of the asides to remind you this was a monologue set in a cafe a little wearing. But I found Erica, the American girl he falls in love with, implausible and irritating, and the ending vaguely unsatisfying. ( )

Two men sit in a sidewalk café in Lahore, Pakistan, as the day slips from afternoon, to twilight, and then night. One, a native Pakistani, weaves a compelling tale of his meteoric rise and equally precipitous fall, while the other – an American tourist, businessman or perhaps an intelligence agent – listens attentively, the tension between the two rising as the monologue unfolds. That’s the premise of Mohsin Hamid’s gripping new novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

Changez, the narrator of Hamid’s tale, emigrates to the United States in the late 1990s. He enrolls at Princeton University, where he excels in his studies, and secures a prized position with Underwood Samson, a New York business valuation firm. Changez’s progress at the company is dramatic and it appears his prospects are boundless. But when, on a business trip to Manila on September 11, 2001, he feels a shiver of pleasure as he watches the hijacked airplanes slam into the World Trade Center, he must confront the realization that no matter the success he achieves in his adopted homeland he’ll always suffer from a sense of alienation there. Inexorably, those feelings grow, and poison Changez’s commitment to his work, his colleagues, and even the values of the society whose prizes he seeks.

Alongside this story is Changez’s wistful account of his love for Erica, a fellow Princeton student and aspiring novelist he meets on a summer trip to Greece and then pursues when he begins his job in New York. Erica is haunted by the death of her former boyfriend and struggles to overcome that loss and reciprocate Changez’s passion for her.

Employing taut, intense prose, Hamid is equal to the challenge of maintaining the momentum of Changez’s dramatic monologue for nearly 200 pages. Through the course of that story, the reader’s perceptions of the narrator and his single listener are constantly shifting. Hamid offers no facile answers to the dilemma of a world where suspicion of the alien is a tragic fact of life. Instead, he gives us an unforgettable glimpse into the mind of one man grappling with the challenge that fact imposes upon him. ( )

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a conversation, but really a monologue: our narrator Changez explains, to an American on unidentified business in Pakistan, how his negative feelings toward America developed. Changez began as a fresh and hopeful student at Princeton who landed a dream job straight out of school. But as he is immersed in America's cutthroat business culture, paired with the elitist and alienating sentiments of America post-9/11, he finds that he cannot support America's self-identity and foreign relations when they have become so volatile and unpleasant.

The book is deceptively small and very pleasant; I was completely taken by Changez's narration. But it really does have dark and tense undertones. Some Americans reacted so shamefully to September 11 - Changez recounts being harrassed for being a "fucking Arab" (he's not) and being advised to shave his beard for its negative connotations. And America's foreign policy and attitudes about foreigners generally shifted in a very negative way after September 11.

I have to admit, when I picked up the book knowing little beyond the title, I assumed the narrator would be much different - a "fundamentalist" as an apologist not just for Islam, but for violent terrorism. And it's such a poor reflection on American (and my) assumptions about Islam to associate fundamentalism and religiosity so strongly with terrorism, and really makes the reader grasp how difficult and hostile a situation Americans of Middle Eastern descent were facing immediately following September 11. ( )

We discussed this in the ‘Equal Writes’ book group , and I was more sceptical than most. As far as I can estimate, the book contains 50,000 words or so, so it’s a novella tricked out to look more-or-less like a novel (184 pages in the US edition).

For a novella, the structure is quite complex: we have one side of an evening’s conversation between Changez (the narrator) and an unidentified American, which frames the story of how Changez set off for America full of hope and ambition and returned disillusioned after 9/11; at the centre of this narrative there is Changez’s love affair with Erica, an upper-class American girl and coeval of his at Princeton.

And that’s where it gets really schematic: Erica (I am Erica–I, America) is still in love with Chris (Christopher Columbus, maybe) who she had known since early childhood and who died very young of lung cancer without ever having smoked. Chris was a good-looking boy with Old World appeal and a collection of European comic books, so let’s say he symbolises the European inheritance which Erica is unable to turn away from to embrace the new represented by Changez; after a night of love where Erica pretends that Changez is Chris, she slips back into mental illness and (apparently) commits suicide by throwing herself in the Hudson River.

Among other improbabilities, Erica is a writer whose first book just out of college has been accepted by a publisher (or just agent?) We learn that this book ‘is more of a novella than a novel. It leaves space for your thoughts to echo.’

Apart from Erica, Changez’s story is that he is from a downwardly-mobile upper-class family in Lahore and comes to the USA determined to restore his fortunes. After graduating brilliantly from Princeton, he eagerly seeks out a job at Underwood Samson (Uncle Sam!), a firm whose business it is to ruthlessly value companies and whose motto is ‘Focus on the fundamentals’.

Changez finds his identification with (the) US after a business trip to Manila where he feels himself identified with the conquering American Other and the US’s paranoid and backward-looking reaction to 9/11.

In an attempt to save him from himself, the firm send him to Valparaiso to value a publishing company. There, the proprietor Juan-Bautista (must be Spanish for John the Baptist) enlightens Changez about his role as an American janissary (janissaries were elite troops of the Ottoman empire, taken from their Christian familes at a young age–a strange thing for a Moslem Princeton graduate not to know) who fought to erase their own civilisation, leaving nothing else to turn to. Presumably this explains the name Changez (Urdu version of Genghis) as a destroyer of Moslem civilisation. (Or it could just be that he is the Changes that AmErica is unable to accept after her tragic loss–but this is a bit crude even for an allegory.)

So Changez returns to Pakistan and armed with an undergraduate degree and six month’s experience gets a job teaching at the local university (convincing, or what?) He becomes as it seems a moderate opponent of American power and after one of his students is disappeared, he condemns American readiness to kill people in other countries and frighten people far away in a TV interview, which extract gains some international exposure. And he grows a beard.

So we return to the evening in Lahore, where Changez first of all accosts the American, who then sits with his back to the wall, regularly texts ‘the company’ and may have a concealed weapon. But he is alarmed by the waiter and other surrounding men who Changez seems to know and look as though they mean to do him harm.

Changez tells us that not all Pakistanis are potential terrorists and not all Americans are undercover assassins, but of course Erica has already told us that this is an open ending that ‘leaves space for your thoughts to echo’.

And I was irritated!

This is the kind of clever-clever playing of formal games which normally appeals to me, but here there wasn’t enough of the gloss and bloom of surface realism to interest me in the first place. And what does the title mean?–A fundamentalist is surely one who adheres to a particular, rigorist, interpretation of Islam, and any mention the name of Allah is carefully excluded here. In fact, as I recall it nobody in Pakistan has a name apart from Changez–not his family, not his dog, not anybody.

Of course the clever indication that Changez did not want to ‘focus on the fundamentals’ for Uncle Sam has no doubt helped the book sell many copies–the American edition has a cover in green with a crescent moon and star punched out of it, just to reinforce the message. And the American edition has lots of what seem to be random errors in English: ‘treaded water’, ‘fair-haired [for blue-eyed] boy’, ‘the waiter will bring us more momentarily’ and so on…

The book is obviously meant to be about nostalgia–Changez comments how the US is returning to a fairytale past of generals and flags after 9/11, while Erica says that she loves it when he talks about Lahore, he seems so alive. When Changez first visits Erica’s room, he sees a drawing by Chris of an island in a lake on an island in the sea, as it were an image of turning in on oneself, and at the end he reads her MS and it’s about a girl alone on an island making do.

In my end is my beginning, as we’re no doubt supposed to think…
See http://notesofanidealist.wordpress.co... for possible updates/second thoughts. ( )

This compact tale of a young Pakistani man forced to leave New York and return to his home country after 9/11 makes for a gripping read. True, there's a slightly contrived element to the narrative (that I'm not going to give away here), but the protagonist is fascinating, the story suspenseful, and the writing impressively self-assured. The novel manages to make a statement of social, cultural, and political weight, and be a breeze to read at the same time. ( )

I did see Britz as well and found it quite ... ... disturbing, but well done.
I also listened to Hamid's interview on the BBC world book club which prompted a second read.
I won't summarize the book again.
My problems with the book were:
I became a bit weary of the man's constant fear of Pakistani waiters and such.
As me, being the one that Changes is talking to, there were many other questions that I would have asked and my responses would have been quite different.
I also realized (though Changes probably didn't which is unfortunate) that Changes got something that most Americans didn't get. As much as the guest had his own preconceived notions of Pakistan, Changes only glimpsed a small sliver of america. It was, also obviously difficult for him to separate political from the human aspects.
I found myself wondering if there would be an alternate book: same story, just different reader.
(smile)
I know that it is hard to give so much information, when it is suppose to be a monolog. A monolog by its very nature means that some things will be left out.
also, at first, Changes' polite language was a bit unsettling.
And, the fact that he says: "I am a lover of America," and sought this man out to tell his story, seems maybe to be a bit of a introspectrive time for him.

I did like the descriptions of Lahore and Pakistan.
I understand that many people will walk the same journey as Changes.
Yes, will there be a "changes2," where he talks about being in Pakistan and dealing with the shifting lifestyles that abound in Pakistan. I have not read enough books about immigration and possible assemilation to rate it against such literary works. But, I will say that Mohsin Hamed deals with his character's feelings in his short novel much better than Monica Ali did in her "Brick Lane."

I saw an interview with Hamid and another pakistani author: Mudahdin (sorry probably spelled it wrong). and they talked about not really belonging to neither culture/country. I had wished that the book was longer and Changes' thoughts feelings about moving back to Pakistan. I enjoyed the book and the love story between him and Erica. I want to go to Pakistan and taste their tea! I understand the feelings of exclusion and reassessing one's values. I would recommend this book.

Like The Portrait, this book is a monologue by a young Pakistani and follows his journey, from home to Princeton to New York and back to Pakistan after the 9/11 attack. It is actually a one sided conversation between the narrator and an unknown man across the table from him at a restaurant.

It is also a love story and a story of the loss of hope brought on by events beyond our control. While the ending was disappointing, I can say that it is worth the read. ( )

I think I enjoyed this. I found the style of the book a little off-putting. It is narrated by the protagonist and there are some parts that didn't really "mesh" for me - for instance, why would he be telling all of this to someone so unfamiliar to him. The story follows Changez as he falls in love with the American Dream, and with an American girl. He goes to Princeton, gets himself a great job afterwards and everything seems sorted, until 09/11, when he starts to question what he's doing and why. Maybe it was too short for me? There certainly didn't seem to be that much time in the book after 09/11 for all that happened in Changez's life then. ( )

This is a curious book, and it didn't grab me as much as I hoped. Foremost, it's told in a monologue, and we know almost nothing about the man this is being narrated to. That alone has its weaknesses, specifically why a person would spill all their most sordid secrets to a total stranger. The protagonist Changez, is a young Pakistani man who falls in love - and out of love - with America. For this being in first person, Changez depicts himself quite well-rounded. There are a few times where he does incredibly stupid things and I had the profound urge to yell at him. I think the novel is at its strongest when dealing with Erica, the American girl Changez loves. That by itself is a haunting love story, even without all of the political accouterments.

I wanted to be sucked into the story and into his mindset. I wanted to see how a man who loves America might fall by the wayside. I didn't find Changez's journey to be believable. Maybe it needed more emphasis on the racism after 9/11. Maybe I just wanted to see more rage on his part, more cold rationality. I'm left feeling... wishy-washy.

As for the ending... I don't know quite what to think. ( )

A book that is impossible to put down, a quick read. The reader grows impatient to follow as the story unfolds, but personally, I also grew rather disappointed. The part where Changez starts to have doubts about his identity and his stance towards the US is superficial and not elaborated well enough; his arguments and his vision presented as such is full of clichés. In my opinion it does not allows the reader to understand the Pakistani viewpoint better. On the contrary, it is full of generalities and the moral/spiritual change of the main character unfolds so quickly that one might feel a lack of depth, a lack of substance. Furthermore, the romantic aspect of the story is quite exaggerated and idealistic, which contradicts the otherwise quite realistic setting. I don't appreciate the title, either - the reason, once more, is that the author fail to elaborate on the subject. Many more problematic issues (related to the topic) could have been revealed. Then again, maybe it would be exiting the territories of non-fiction, I don't know.
Even though the book didn't live up to my expectations, I would recommend it for it is indeed interesting and adventurous. A perfect book for the summer. ( )

A quick and insightful read. The text is the dialogue of a Pakistani delivered to an American stranger over dinner in Lahore, with only the Pakistani's words. The reader is invited to take the part of the American listener.
The Pakistani, Changez, graduates with honors from Princeton and lands a job as a Manhattan Master of the Universe. Following the 9/11 attack and a tough relationship with a troubled American classmate, Changez's narrow vision of his life in America gradually falls to pieces. He returns to Pakistan and a university professorship, becoming popular with students for his leftist, anti-American Pakistani nationalism. The book ends ambiguously, for ambiguity is the lynch-pin of this cross-cultural study.
The author brilliantly nails the worst of American post-9/11attitudes. ( )

Though slow-paced, The Reluctant Fundamentalist was nevertheless a bit of a page turner. The first person voicing as a Pakistani in the post 9/11 world, unfolding the story of his western sojourn to the American visitor, forms an important and needed perspective on the heavy-handed American presence in the world. I must admit, however, to a little weariness, by the time the tale was concluded, at the artifice of the unusual 1st person-implied 2nd person point of view Hamid took. The tale winds along in the present moment, as the protagonist unfolds his story to the American visitor (who is you, the reader), but then it rather abruptly concludes with a rather unlikely Hitchcock-ian ending, if not one altogether unexpected. I struggled to maintain an avid interest in this tale, but upon concluding it, I realize that it may well become a memorable read. One does not realize the quality of such a book until the whole of it has been read.

A very clever and imaginatively constructed novella, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a monologue told over the course of a meal shared by an anonymous American and Changez, a young Pakistani, at a street café in Lahore. Hamid is excellent at constructing a snapshot view of post-9/11 America as viewed by a Muslim immigrant who has worked hard at becoming a success in his adoptive home, yet who still experiences feelings of being an outsider. He sketches out the process by which a bright, not overtly religious or aggressive, person may be drawn to fundamentalism and extremism, and if there were points at which I felt that sketch lacked sufficient detail, I felt the tense and uncomfortable climax made up for that.

The biggest problem I had with the book, however, was the allegorical framework which Hamid attempted to give it. While never overbearing—he doesn't seem to be a writer given to anvils—it made the book feel overly symmetrical at times and weakened what he was trying to do. His love affair with a woman called (am)Erica, her obsession with her doomed first love Chris(topher Columbus?), his job at the aggressive, privileged firm of (U)nderwood (S)ampson—it reduces the sense of friction in the work, I think, and makes Changez' eventual decisions seem a little pallidly pre-determined.

Despite its flaws, however, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an intelligent and thought-provoking piece, and I'll definitely seek out more of Hamid's work to see what he can produce on a broader canvas. ( )

In the wake of 9/11, a few thoughtful people, in addition to being angry and sorrowful, wondered why "they" hate us. What had America done to inspire such hatred? Why would anyone wish to kill innocents? Perhaps knowing the answers to those questions would help prevent future attacks.

Mohsin Hamid can't answer those questions completely, but he does give us some insight into the thinking of those living in the Middle East and Southeast Asia in the excellent short novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist. An immensely troubling book, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is the story of a young Pakistani man, known to us only as Changez, who studies at Princeton and captures a high-paying, high-profile job at a financial services firm in New York upon his graduation. Ultimately he returns to Pakistan, where he meets an American man and invites him to tea, over which he relates the story of his life.

The tea, which precedes a meaty dinner followed by a too-sweet dessert, is somehow filled with menace, though it is never entirely clear from whence the menace originates, until, perhaps, the end of the book -- and maybe not even then. The waiter is rather too attentive and a bit threatening, making the nameless American uneasy. The American is a large man who insists on sitting with his back to the wall and seems to be carrying a gun. He is very closed-mouthed, leaving Changez to carry the conversation by himself.

Changez's background in Pakistan is one of genteel poverty -- or, if not exactly poverty, of belonging to a failing aristocracy, where money is never in abundance but honor is, perhaps, overly so. Thus, when Changez is at Princeton, he works hard to support himself, but in three different jobs where he will be unnoticed -- in odd corners of the campus, for instance, like libraries few people frequent. In the summer following his graduation, he goes to Greece on the strength of a sign-on bonus with his high-flying finance firm, and falls in love with the beautiful and wealthy Erica. Erica seems to return his affection, but she is troubled by a death that she still grieves with all her body, soul and mind.

Changez throws himself into his work, and excels. He seems set to become the golden boy at his firm, and is on assignment in an exciting locale -- the Philippines -- when terrorists strike the World Trade Center.

"I was in my room, packing my things. I turned on the television and saw what at first I took to be a film. But as I continued to watch, I realized that it was not fiction but news. I stared as one -- and then the other -- of the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center collapsed. And then I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased.

"Your disgust is evident; indeed, your large hand has, perhaps without your noticing, clenched into a fist. But please believe me when I tell you I am no sociopath; I am not indifferent to the suffering of others...[W]hen I tell you I was pleased at the slaughter of thousands of innocents, I do so with a profound sense of perplexity."

And so begins the unraveling of Changez's carefully constructed life. He begins to question America's exercise of power from a point of view foreign to any American -- from that of one who is subject to American power, who can be thrust into war by America (in this case, a war engineered between India and Pakistan by American politicking) without having any voice in the decisions leading to it. He begins to wonder why he is seeking money and power foreign to his traditions and his people, and why these things matter to him and what he is really about. Yes, he loves New York in a way that few New Yorkers can really understand, but does he love Lahore, his home city in Pakistan, more dearly? What are his true obligations? What is patriotism, and what does it mean in the wake of the attack on the Twin Towers?

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a short and powerful book. It will make some people very angry. It will make other people very self-righteous. It will make most everyone think. ( )

I was stunned by this book. Essentially a monologue narrating a Pakistani’s life, from home to Princeton to New York to 9/11 to return to his homeland, it is actually a conversation between the narrator and the man across the table from him at a restaurant. It is an elegant dissection of cultures in apposition to each other—that is, side by side and yet very apart. The writing is very spare, somewhat like Cormac McCarthy or Muriel Spark, but you as the reader are drawn into the story of a man who finds himself first spiraling out of control as he attempts to fit into the world he believes should be his life, then the slow re-establishment of his persona after several tragic occurrences, including the events of 9/11. I strongly recommend this book. ( )

Kev lent me this as he had it in the office and I was about to go off travelling.

Maybe I'm missing something, but from where I'm standing, it's feels like brain candy with a really unsatisfactory ending.

For a much better treatment of the subject matter, watch Cannel 4's two-parter Britz. ( )

A book in the style of a one-sided conversation is hard to pull off - and aside from the odd (inevitable) clunky bit, Hamid does a good job.
It's a good device because it makes you wary of the narrator - are they telling the truth or is it their less than perfect interpretation? Do they have a hidden agenda?
My difficulty is that for me, the agenda never quite becomes clear. The story is well told, but it's a young man's story told whilst still young, which means the passion of the teller seems skewed to an older person like me - especially with respect to the one-sided love story.
Anyway, I enjoyed this, but I came to the end and felt that it was too abrupt and the reader is very much left to their own devices to understand how Changez' time in America had ultimately changed him - which is good food for thought, but also a bit of a cop out by the author.

Since writing the above I heard an interview with Mohsin Hamid on the BBC's World Book Club. He has obviously thought hard about the book and how the read interacts with it, which left me feeling impressed and even a little guilty for expecting a rounded ending. Could be interesting to read this again now I know what happens in the end. ( )

Changez is living the American dream. He’s top in his class at Princeton, working for a successful evaluation firm, and falling in love. Until tragedy strikes on 9/11 and Changez’s initial reaction is to smile. But he is far from an extremist. Following 9/11 he begins to see his position in elite Manhattan society slip, his work begins to fall short, and he suffers an identity crisis. So he gets himself fired and heads back to Lahore, which is where we find him today - narrating his life story to a suspicious tourist over tea and dinner.

I thought the way in which this story is told was original and unlike anything I had read before. We hear Changez’s story through a completely one sided conversation he’s having with this American tourist. Any knowledge the reader has of what this tourist is saying or doing is if Changez repeats his questions in his answer.

The subject matter touched upon in this book is also something I think that needs to be discussed. Here we find a man who has nothing against America - it has provided him with an education, a prosperous job, and a beautiful woman. Yet these feelings of rage and hate still lurk under the surface. Not even Changez knows they exist until they surface after the attacks. I would venture to say that these feelings Changez experiences are far more common than we think, and they do not necessarily make one a bad person. I personally can relate to some of the sentiments expressed in this book, and I’m far from an extremist or someone who hates America. I’m also sure many of my friends and acquaintances could easily find something to relate to in Changez’s story.

The ending is definitely a cliff hanger, and I had a feeling something of the sort would happen at the very end. The ending is abrupt and it leaves the reader craving much more of Changez’s story.

Hamid is a gifted author, and The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an exciting page turner that explores a very delicate but relevant subject. I would recommend it to everyone. ( )