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The Reluctant Fundamentalist

by Mohsin Hamid

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Sales Rank:

1964

Studio:

Harvest Books

Binding:

Paperback

Number Of Pages:

208

Publication Date:

April 14, 2008

Publisher:

Harvest Books

EDITORIAL REVIEWS

Product Description

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with an uneasy American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful encounter . . .

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 budding 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.

Amazon.com
Mohsin Hamid's first novel, Moth Smoke, dealt with the confluence of personal and political themes, and his second, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, revisits that territory in the person of Changez, a young Pakistani. Told in a single monologue, the narrative never flags. Changez is by turns naive, sinister, unctuous, mildly threatening, overbearing, insulting, angry, resentful, and sad. He tells his story to a nameless, mysterious American who sits across from him at a Lahore cafe. Educated at Princeton, employed by a first-rate valuation firm, Changez was living the American dream, earning more money than he thought possible, caught up in the New York social scene and in love with a beautiful, wealthy, damaged girl. The romance is negligible; Erica is emotionally unavailable, endlessly grieving the death of her lifelong friend and boyfriend, Chris.

Changez is in Manila on 9/11 and sees the towers come down on TV. He tells the American, "...I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased... I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees..." When he returns to New York, there is a palpable change in attitudes toward him, starting right at immigration. His name and his face render him suspect.

Ongoing trouble between Pakistan and India urge Changez to return home for a visit, despite his parents' advice to stay where he is. While there, he realizes that he has changed in a way that shames him. "I was struck at first by how shabby our house appeared... I was saddened to find it in such a state... This was where I came from... and it smacked of lowliness." He exorcises that feeling and once again appreciates his home for its "unmistakable personality and idiosyncratic charm." While at home, he lets his beard grow. Advised to shave it, even by his mother, he refuses. It will be his line in the sand, his statement about who he is. His company sends him to Chile for another business valuation; his mind filled with the troubles in Pakistan and the U.S. involvement with India that keeps the pressure on. His work and the money he earns have been overtaken by resentment of the United States and all it stands for.

Hamid's prose is filled with insight, subtly delivered: "I felt my age: an almost childlike twenty-two, rather than that permanent middle-age that attaches itself to the man who lives alone and supports himself by wearing a suit in a city not of his birth." In telling of the janissaries, Christian boys captured by Ottomans and trained to be soldiers in the Muslim Army, his Chilean host tells him: "The janissaries were always taken in childhood. It would have been far more difficult to devote themselves to their adopted empire, you see, if they had memories they could not forget." Changez cannot forget, and Hamid makes the reader understand that--and all that follows. --Valerie Ryan

A Conversation with Mohsin Hamid

Set in modern-day Pakistan, Mohsin Hamid's debut novel, Moth Smoke, went on to win awards and was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His bold new novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is a daring, fast-paced monologue of a young Pakistani man telling his life story to a mysterious American stranger. It's a controversial look at the dark side of the American Dream, exploring the aftermath of 9/11, international unease, and the dangerous pull of nostalgia. Amazon.com senior editor Brad Thomas Parsons shared an e-mail exchange with Mohsin Hamid to talk about his powerful new book

Read the Amazon.com Interview with Mohsin Hamid

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 95 reviews)

A Senior Thesis Gone Bad

The "Reluctant Fundamentalist" fails to deliver on its excellent title. It is brief--too brief, and I read it in a couple of sittings. The first half is good, and the second half God awful! It reads like a senior thesis where the author took a lot of care in the beginning, and then ran out of time and just dashed off the ending in order to graduate. The hatred with which the Muslim protagonist becomes consumed at the end remains unexplained because the author really takes pains in the first half to explain not just how he is treated fairly by the Americans, but how he is handed every advantage on a silver platter upon graduation from college! As far as I could tell the only motive for the protagonist's descent into a personal hell is homesickness for his country and culture. A very unsatisfying book.
July 01, 2008

A powerful and insightful book

I have been following some of the reviews of this book and am not entirely surprised by a few of the negative comments about it. While the book may have a couple of drawbacks in style and structure it nevertheless delivers an extraordinary insight into the modern Muslim perspective and the dilemma or challenges posed by Western society. Many reviewing the book seemed to want the book to answer the 'problems' about Islam and Muslims rather that provide an analysis of the other side (i.e. the West)so when the the book took this new refreshing angle on the issue the response was to criticize and label the work as an attack on America and also somewhat sympathetic to the Islamic terrorist - a hypocrisy that the book excellently brings out making it uncomfortable reading for many. For those who want their preconceptions and prejudices challenged this is a wonderful read but those looking for the same stale good Muslim /bad Muslim dichotomy are likely to come out confused after reading this book.
June 30, 2008

shallow

This book has pretensions of being oh-so-deep, but it sheds no new light on the topic of Islamic fundamentalism. The narrator is confused, doesn't know who he really is. First he likes his new American identity, then he discovers his "Muslim roots" and decides he too will hate America. In the process he hates himself, or what he has become. So the outer layer of the narrator's identity is American, he peels that off and decides he will identify with his religion. Someone needs to write a deeper novel where the protagonists peels off more than just the top layer of the onion! That is why I say this novel is shallow. I for one would like to know why Pakistanis (like the narrator of this book) are still so loyal to Islam? They aren't even Arab, as the narrator himself points out when he has that confrontation in the parking lot. This book does not explain why South Asians still identify with their Muslim invaders and the religion that was left behind by the Islamic Empire, an empire that was (like the America the narrator hates) the big bad imperialist of its own day. Pakistanis speak Urdu, not Arabic, so why so much sympathy for Afghanistan and none for India? Urdu and Hindi are mutually intelligible languages from what I understand; Arabic and Urdu are not! Language is culture. Religion is tripe!

June 17, 2008

How to understand Islamic Fundamentalism

Of course, I hate that word. It implies something false about Islam, relegating it to the Western understanding of religion, and forcing another culture to conform to the standards of our own. This is why most Islamicists (those who study Islam) prefer the term Islamist rather than Fundamentalist, for Islam is inherently a religion that turns to the fundamentals. At best, Islamic Fundamentalist is redundant. But sadly, the term Islamist has not yet caught on with the general public, and so we are reduced to using poor terms in order to make ourselves understood.

I've never come across a format quite like this before. It bore certain similarities to the Dear Reader style of the past, recently so well articulated in The City of Dreaming Books. But Hamid had a very unusual twist. Everything is from the first person perspective of the protagonist in the short conversation which frames the book. You really hear no other voice but that of Changez; we only know his thoughts, and only those thoughts that he chooses to express. This is a conversation with only one person.

Far from being a gimick, this approach is central to the novel, and to the amazing ending. We follow the changes in the life of Changez, and more importantly his philosophy of life, and we are gripped from beginning to end. There wasn't a moment when I got bored. There wasn't a line in the novel that I felt misplaced, or where too much was added. The novel weaves between the centerpiece conversation at the cafe and the story of Changez' life, and somehow, Hamid weaves both together as one tapestry.

Changez is sitting in a cafe with a nervous American in Pakistan. Hamid's intricate description of the cafe and surrounding square brought back pesonal memories of Djamma f'naa in Marrakesh, Morocco, and Hamid describes so vividly I felt like I was back in the square, with it's sellers and food vendors. Hamid accurately captures the Middle Eastern ability to observe others intimately, as well as common American misconceptions and misreadings of life around them. (Such as the common perception that Middle Eastern cities are more dangerous than American cities, when the inverse is true, about a hundred times over.) This was a completely believable American, and a completely believable Pakistani.

Changez' backstory is also gripping. I wanted to know what happened next to the characters. I still find it hard to believe that this is a work of fiction- the characters are drawn that real. There was only one moment that was not as believable- that of the sexual relations between Changez and Erica. Until I realized that they accurately modeled the relationship between America and the West that Hamid was trying to illustrate. America can't have a satisfiying relationship with another country. It can only do so if that other country pretends to be something it's not- pretends to be culturally something much closer to the American view of the world. If that other country denies its own culture, than America can deal with it, and happily so.

And this relationship between countries and cultures is of course the underlying theme of Hamid's work. You may not agree with Hamid, or Changez. (For the book has the feel that it is somewhat autobiographical.) You may be intensely patriotic, and ra-ra for America. But this book more than any other I've read helps to explain how someone can become an Islamist, and what leads them to see the U.S. as an enemy of all the values that their own culture holds dear. You may not agree at the end that America is an empire. But you will at least understand how others percieve us in this way. For as I have known too many Americans who act like the American in the cafe in Pakistan, I also have known too many Muslims (and indeed, many foreign non-Muslims) who have come to the same conclusions as Changez does.

How I wish I could discuss the ending with you. For that ending goes rather to the heart of the issues of what it means to be an Islamist, and what it means to be empire. I will leave you with that thought to contemplate as you close the last page of the book, and consider a brave new world.

Also recommended: Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity by Ron Sider, for its description of how America lives off the back of the 2/3rds World.
June 15, 2008

Oddly titled

My book club recently read the book in hopes that it would be provide some real insight from an 'Americanized' Muslim. However we generally agreed 1) the 'fundamentalist' aspect, as in spiritual/religious content or motives, was virtually non existent (unless you count growing a beard); 2) the protagonist's 'rejection of America was flimsy (based on a couple contrived experiences) and motives unconvincing; 3) the device used by the author (revealing his most intimate feelings to an voiceless American stranger in a public cafe) was unrealistic.

On a positive note, the book was a pretty easy read (178 pages) and we learned some of the culture, language, food, and customs of Lahore.
June 12, 2008

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