Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #242 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-24
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Marta Simonetti-Whitford, Guardian Books of the Year
"If a book had to be praised for its merits in defining the anxieties of our post-9/11 society, then Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist would be the one to win"

Philip Pullman
"I read Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist with increasing admiration. It is beautifully written - what a joy it is to find such intelligent prose, such clarity of thought and exposition - and superbly constructed. The author has managed to tighten the screw of suspense almost without our being aware it is happening, and the result is a tale of enormous tension. I read a lot of thrillers - or rather I start reading a lot of thrillers, and put most of them down - but this is more exciting than any thriller I've read for a long time, as well as being a subtle and elegant analysis of the state of our world today. I was enormously impressed"

Jo Glanville, Observer Books of the Year
"An elegant, artful, haunting novella - a deceptively simple narrative that is in fact deeply ambiguous"

Customer Reviews

Fundamentally hopeless...
Oh dear. It is rare you get the chance to read such a dispiritingly badly-written book as this. In a novella that is barely half a book-length, it is odd to be screaming for an editor. But this book badly needs someone to have pointed out the many problems, way before people were asked to spend cash on it.

As others have noted, the narrative voice is very, very annoying. It reads to me like a cod-Pakistani, an obtuse and ignorant caricature that owes much to Peter Sellers and patronising attitudes from decades ago, but nothing to modern Pakistan. Since the author is Pakistani, I wonder how this happened. Perhaps he was, in his own patronising way, portraying what he thought we might expect a Pakistani to sound like. He failed dismally. Failed us, and failed his own culture. It is risible.

The narrator's "love interest" Erica suffers from depression. I assume it is depression. In fact, the author clearly has no concept whatsoever of what depression is, or how to portray it. I laughed out loud several times as he tried. The best he could manage, was something akin to a Mills and Boon character suffering an attack of the vapours. She swoons, she eats haphazardly, she puts her hand to her forehead a lot. This is a woman spiralling into suicide, remember. The Erica character does not even need to be there. She exists as Hamid's clunkingly bad "metaphor for America". Feeble and pitiful in its' execution, it is a bad idea.

The whole book hinges on the main character's reaction to 9/11, and subsequent move towards fundamentalism. Let's leave aside how the character's back story resembles the author's (a shallow, lazy and conceited way to write). At no stage does the reader get any sense of the major changes in the world from this book. The character is not even in New York on 9/11, and there is little description of his impression of it. Almost everyone can remember watching this event, and their reaction. Hamid's character views it much like watching a Cup Final.

The author totally fails to give any sense of why the main character would turn against the life he currently lives. No-one slights the character, insults him, threatens his fundamental beliefs or impugns his character. There is no credible reason - or even analysis - of why the change might take place. And what change is it? In the last few pages he reports some things that he may, or may not, be involved in. So we are left with the option of him being a stupid little fantasist boring a stranger witless.

It is easy to imagine the conversation at the publishing house. I'm Pakistani, and I've written a book about a Muslim who returns to Pakistan after 9/11. I can't write to save my life, though, is that okay? Oh, good. I'm a dumb publisher who will print anything with `Muslim' and `9/11' in it. Oh, and let's have an annoying smugshot of you on the back cover, too. Let's not bother if it's any good, it has `fundamentalist' in the title. We'll get someone to call it powerful, a savage indictment, the most important book about 9/11, blah, blah.

There is nothing wrong with ambiguity, if it springs from intelligence and depth. There is nothing wrong with a short and simple book, if it has power and resonance and clarity. There is everything wrong with this book. It is shallow, clichéd, simplistic, poorly written, devoid of any intent or insight. This book is a quite miserable effort, from an author who exhibits no skill at all. He is at least ten years away from showing the control, imagination and ability to write a half-decent novel. Let's hope it's ten years before we see his next one.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist
This was a very interesting, challenging read. I agree with the previous reader that there may be an intended ambiguity about who the fundamentalist is. The capitalist younger man or the Pakistani Muslim side of the man.

There is the bizarre revelation that the hero feels exaltation and pleasure when he sees the plane go into the Twin Tower building. This is not analysed with any particular scrutiny by the narrator and that is perhaps one of the flaws of the book. Another flaw is that we don't really get to know the voice of the woman with whom he is infatuated - so I was left wondering who she really was, why she was so depressed and gave up on life so easily.

The ending was bizarre - I ought not to reveal it - but it was like the end of a thriller. I would recommend this to others who perhaps lean towards critical of American foreign policy but ultimately it doesn't really go nearer to explaining Muslim Fundamentalism.

Brilliant introspective of a repented Jannissary
At the end of this book you may be left with a bitter taste in your mouth, with the sensation that the climax of the novel was not completely fulfilled.
However it is certain that a so-called Western person is left with a little better grasp of the Pakistani culture and way of seeing, and with a little (this time only a little) better understandment of the drive to fundamentalism that the 9/11 attacks provoked.
The key of reading of this book is surely not an extended interpretation of Changez's story, cause that might leave you disappointed lately. I believe you should in fact look at the narrator's story as an almost isolate case, deep and intelligent, but still an individual's story.
A definite plus for this novel is Changez's aristocratic, maniacally studied and careful choice of words and way of recounting to his American fellow this beautiful story of infatuation and desenchantment with the American culture. His frequent digressions about Pakistani culture are a great diversification for what could be a pretty "heavy" reading.
All in all a great reading, suggested to anyone who's interested in deepening a little more in the psychology of fundamentalism and the relativism of today's world.
Who is the Reluctant Fundamentalist? The Underwood Samson's Changez who must "Focus on fundamentals" to get his job done, or the Lahore's Changez, a man who manages to get back to his land's fundamentals?