The Reluctant Fundamentalist. By Mohsin Hamid

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Mohsin Hamid

Penguin Books. First published 2007.

This is more a novelette, really, with only 184 pages of widely spaced text. It is a wonderfully readable book though, with an unusual narrative style. The Pakistani narrator buttonholes an American in Lahore and, with no apparent motive, tells him about his life as a brilliant student in Princeton, then with a financial firm in New York, flying around the world, doing what those 'Masters of the Universe' do. He is always aware of his status as a non-white, non-christian immigrant from a 'third-world' country but learns to ignore the differences between him and his classmates and 'real' American friends - (his recruiter tells him that he scores over his classmates because he has the third world hunger and they don't) - to the extent he falls in mutual love with a beautiful intelligent white American girl. While her family is making obvious and heroic efforts to not dislike him, she unfortunately descends into a form of madness, finally killing herself despite his efforts to help her. This bit, while interesting in itself, is a sub-plot though. While these events are going on, he is brought up sharply against the events of September 11, 2001 when two planes crashed into World Trade Twin Towers in New York. He sees it on TV, while on a business trip in Manila, and things change for him suddenly and sharply when he realizes that his first gut reaction is a kind of satisfaction that the event took place. He returns to a completely different US, and after some time, decides to return to Pakistan, where he becomes -- what? A fundamentalist? A terrorist? Is he speaking to the American prior to killing him? Is the American a tourist or is he a secret agent? The answers do not really matter. What struck me about the book was the brilliant, unsentimental and completely authentic tracing  of the career track of an intelligent and sensitive 'IIT' type in US at the turn of the millennium.