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Loading... The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007)by Mohsin Hamid
  
Books Read in 2018 (16) » 23 more Books Read in 2016 (618) Booker Prize (221) Books Read in 2021 (721) Unreliable Narrators (94) Books Read in 2019 (3,191) Short and Sweet (212) BBC Radio 4 Bookclub (237) The American Experience (119) Allie's Wishlist (125) No current Talk conversations about this book. The love arc was a blatant rip off of Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. Spoiled the entire book for me. (  ) talalsyed | Jul 22, 2023 |  This book is interesting on several levels. First, the voice grabs you. Second, it is written as though the narrator is speaking to a person over a meal, but we never meet the other person except through the eyes of the narrator. It sounds weird, but it works. Finally, the author convincingly parallels the story of a failed love relationship to the relationship of the United States to the Muslims in its midst. This is done in a subtle way so maybe I'm misinterpreting it, but that's why I'd recommend this book -- especially for a book club -- it definitely leaves you with some thinking to do on our post 9/11 lives. (  ) Anita_Pomerantz | Mar 23, 2023 | Changez, a young Pakistani who has studied in America and worked with a leading US valuation company, meets an anonymous American in Lahore and invites him to a local eatery. Over the course of an evening, we eavesdrop on their conversation, although we only hear Changez in what effectively becomes an extended monologue about his American experience. Hamid's novella follows a format which is becoming quite typical of the more marketable types of literary writers. A story which would have been unremarkable in lesser hands is recounted by a quirky narrator and/or presented in an unusual structure and/or given a plot twist at the end. This gives the book a formulaic feel at times. That said, Hamid is good at what he does - the result is a work which is taut, gripping and topical. ( ) JosephCamilleri | Feb 21, 2023 | Really love this guy’s writing! Great story, and great way to tell a story. I’m a little puzzled about the end but I can be pretty obtuse about things... ( ) steve02476 | Jan 3, 2023 | Changez, a Pakistani man, comes across you - an American man in Lahore, who may or may not be carrying a gun - and brings you out for tea, telling his story and how he went to the U.S. for college, fell in love, and began working there, until events brought him back home. In this slim but challenging book, the entire narrative is a one-sided conversation, telling us both about events as the evening progresses and Changez' time in the U.S. There's a lot of ambiguity - especially in the end - and as a reader I was unsettled by not being sure how much to trust the narrator. I also found his love affair with the elusive Erika very odd. Not exactly a book I enjoyed, but it's one that will stick with me for awhile. (  ) bell7 | May 27, 2022 |
 It seems that Hamid would have us understand the novel's title ironically. We are prodded to question whether every critic of America in a Muslim country should be labeled a fundamentalist, or whether the term more accurately describes the capitalists of the American upper class. Yet these queries seem blunter and less interesting than the novel itself, in which the fundamentalist, and potential assassin, may be sitting on either side of the table.  There's undoubtedly a great novel waiting to be written out of the anguished material of these kinds of east/west encounters. This book may not be it, but its author (who won a Betty Trask award for his first novel, Moth Smoke) certainly has the potential to write it. Has as a student's study guideAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
"Changez is living an immigrant's dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by the elite valuation firm of Underwood Samson. He thrives on the energy of New York, and his budding romance with elegant, beautiful Erica promises entry into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore. But in the wake of September 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned and his relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez's own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love"--Jacket. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.69)
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