How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia: A Novel

I'm marveled by the author's writing skill and his wits.
But as an Asian born person, I do not find this book particularly appealing.
I bought this because Tim Ferriss recommended in his night time routine....

I had fun enough reading this novel - it is a breezy little work with an interesting stylistic hook - that hook being the use of the second person.

However, if one is seeking anything more than entertainment - new ideas or even old ideas presented through a new lens - one must look elsewhere. As another reviewer mentioned, the plot contrived. The characters are distant and rarely, beyond the two main protagonists, fleshed out in any meaningful fashion. The style is cute but, ultimately, I will walk away from this book with only one quasi-memorable line.

In short, Mohsin Hamid has been better and will (one hopes) be better again. I expected more from him than a casual, flimsy second person jaunt. As far as flimsy, casual jaunts go it was satisfactory I suppose.

Why why why do I ever read fiction? Because I keep getting fooled by good reviews I suppose. If you want to know what's actually going on in China, read When A Billion Chinese Jump: How China Will Save Mankind -- Or Destroy It Plot, characters, everything boring, and the language wasn't great either.

The reviews of Mohsin Hamid's "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" were so intriguing that I almost immediately ordered it. As an American living in Bangkok I am always interested in new stories coming out of the continent. Wow, was this book a stinker in my opinion. Over-hyped with barely any substance. Yes, the "Self Help" manual structure was clever, but nothing beyond the chapter headings had any depth, resonance or authenticity to me. It was like he wrote the book in a weekend. The rags to riches story was cliche, and the whole story oddly enough was so generic it could have taken place anywhere.

Waste of time to read. This book is not what the title suggests. Highly recommended by Fareed Zakaria, born in India to an Islamic father and is an Islamic scholar, and other fellow Havardians. Fareed Zakaria earned a doctorate in political science from Harvard. The writer also has a degree from Harvard and a law degree. He was not educated as a journalist or novelist.

The prose is stilted; the subject matter is depressing. The title and the high-level media support is a ruse to get people to read about how the extremely poor class of people live in Pakistan, the Islamic part of India that was made into a separate state.

I did not experience a shred of genuine feeling or inspired to form any picture at all of the characters even though the author described some of their physical characteristics in detail. He is not a skilled novelist and the book is dull, depressing & boring.

Was very disappointed as I loved The Reluctant Fundamentalist ... felt this was
a lazy book ... How to get Filthy Rich by writing a book when you are already famous!
I imagine it sold well because of the author's name ...

This isn't as relative or informative for a foreigner making money in Asia, it is much more catered to people who live in the country side who the author recommends moving to the city where money can be made. It was a decent read, but the author seems a little arrogant for some reason in his writing.

This is the first of Moshin Hamid's books that I've read, but it won't be the last. I, a superslow reader, devoured this novel like a rapacious addict. Hamid's gift for pacing and language creates a narrative rich with warmth, pathos, humor and soul. His characters and settings are fully & sharply observed, and he does a masterful job of setting the protagonist's personal journey against the larger backdrop of the trajectory of rising Asia. Lives full of chance and tragedy, choice and circumstance, buffeted by the tides of greater socio-economic forces at work around them.

The best works of art find their way into your heart and expand it. This one has done that for me. Very highly recommended.

Let's acknowledge right up front that this book is based on a gimmick, a slick writer's gimmick, and that to pull it off it's going to take a bit of work and luck and not a small amount of talent, and even then, it's risky.

When I read the opening sentence, "Look, unless you're writing one, a self-help book is an oxymoron." And onto chapter two, where the author of the self-help book asks if all books aren't really "self-help" books:

"It's remarkable how many books fall into the category of self-help. Why, for example, do you persist in reading that much-praised, breathtakingly boring, foreign novel, slogging through page after page after please-make-it-stop page of tar-slow prose and blush-inducing formal conceit, if not out of an impulse to understand distant lands that because of globalization are increasingly affecting life in your own?"

I figured this was a satire. It is but that's not the meat of it. He goes on to discuss the self-help aspects of pulp novels and winkingly says they're also a form of self-help, and by George, he's right! Of course all books are self-help books. We read to help ourselves in some way, whether it's to please ourselves, educate or challenge ourselves, or actually learn how to help ourselves. Strangely, I still wasn't sure if I was reading satire or a sweeping novel. I decided it's because I was, at least in part, reading both.

To be clear, this is never a self-help book. Mohsin Hamid has taken the steps to "get rich in rising Asia" as a way to tell a sweeping narrative about a man who starts in rural poverty and works himself through various stages to great wealth in the City. An achingly beautiful love story, a rags-to-riches nameless hero's story, the story of a man who is simplistic about wealth equaling happiness to start who goes through ups and downs, learning about love and other things in the process. It sounds so basic, and yet because we have this "self-help" writer to comment on and tell a story inside of a self-help book, it's not at all. And of course, toward the end, the self-help writer admits this was not the most helpful book for getting rich in rising Asia. It made me laugh aloud several times, which isn't something one often finds in a beautiful tale like the one found between these pages.

Nothing is ever named, but we can easily feel moved to the place in the novel with tons of sights, smells, touches thrown in, every food tasted is described richly. Equally rich are some less satisfying sensory experiences. Because we go through the "steps" of getting rich, we feel the rural poverty and then the isolation of being on the lowest rung in the big city. The socioeconomic landscape is as richly woven as the natural one. Upward mobility and globalization are not glossed over, but they aren't judged either. They are just portrayed, while we follow the "you" of the novel - the main character - through his pursuit of getting filthy rich in rising Asia.

There are absolutely gorgeous turns of phrase and light-touch moments of beautiful writing between the purposefully clunky and cynical "self-help" sections. The difference is stark, and I loved the way one bled easily into the other, then when the next chapter started, boom, back to the hard language of self-help.

If you could see my copy, you would note that as I read, more and more highlighting was done, more pages are turned down in an effort to be able to find important or lovely passages again. I ruined this poor paperback in one read, but I would have it no other way. I was in tears toward the end of this novel, and that's way more than any self-help book could've ever promised me. So for me, the risky gimmick absolutely paid off in a reward I will treasure and return to again and again.

This book has an interesting variation from the normal style of narratives, and that's maybe the best part of it. That, and the insight we get into the Pakistani society: if there's truth to it, I am surprised to learn extra-marital sex amidst pursuit of fame or money seems to be as normal as anywhere else. I had thought they are more conservative, even repressive.

But first of all, let me disabuse you of what the title leads you to believe: this is not a self-help book. It's a novel about a guy's life in Pakistan, childhood to late life; I don't know if its autobiographical, but it reads like one.

That said, Hamid tries his best to maintain the "self-help" charade, by starting off each section with a para or two of prosaic advice or observation. Personally, I found these so irrelevant to the story line that I skipped them to get to the narration following, and did not miss anything.

He also maintains the charade by using the 'you' pronoun to refer to himself, as in, "your mother cleans the courtyard..." which makes the book written in the 2nd and 3rd person perspectives. While that work for a real self-help book, here it just turns awkward.

Also, the book is almost entirely in indirect prose: dialogue is so sparse that you might be excused comparing it a set of wikipedia pages, shorn of detail or feeling.

All that said, the actual story being told is old as literature itself: young boy grows up and grows old and loves and loses and regains. .

So there might be more to this book than any other rags-to-riches set in, say, Wichita, Kansas, it's not by much.

I have a buddy who reads even more than I do—which is saying a lot—and is a lot smarter than me, which isn’t saying much. He said he thought this was the best novel he’d ever read. Which is saying a lot. I don’t think it’s the best novel I’ve ever read, but it’s a beautiful book. I confess I’ve been having a hard time finding fiction writers that I can read—I tend to read halfway and then get bored, with the people, or the “see through” author, or pace or the problem. I did not get bored here.. Indeed, I got more and more interested. I give it four stars because it tends not to break out of our general contemporary mindset—which is somewhat dark and without light around the edges. The best art takes us into new worlds, new mindsets. This does take us to a new word, --- rising Asia—but with a non-transcendent world view. But the writing is beautiful, and the characters real, and the pace almost perfect.I have a buddy who reads even more than I do—which is saying a lot—and is a lot smarter than me, which isn’t saying much. He said he thought this was the best novel he’d ever read. Which is saying a lot. I don’t think it’s the best novel I’ve ever read, but it’s a beautiful book. I confess I’ve been having a hard time finding fiction writers that I can read—I tend to read halfway and then get bored, with the people, or the “see through” author, or pace or the problem. I did not get bored here.. Indeed, I got more and more interested. I give it four stars because it tends not to break out of our general contemporary mindset—which is somewhat dark and without light around the edges. The best art takes us into new worlds, new mindsets. This does take us to a new word, --- rising Asia—but with a non-transcendent world view. But the writing is beautiful, and the characters real, and the pace almost perfect. These characters, and their lives, will stick with ya.

I picked up this book at our local library, without expecting anything out of the ordinary, in fact, I didn't even choose to spend the few bucks on the kindle edition.

Next thing I know, it's 2am, I can't keep my eyes open and still don't want to put the book down: the next day is luckily a Saturday so I pick it up again first thing in the morning and don't put it down until I'm finished.
What I told my wife was, that I thought this was possibly the best book (out of hundreds) that I've possibly read in my life (not the best, only because we're talking Murakami's Norwegian Wood and Cacucci's Puerto Escondido or Stephenson's Snow Crash - but it's right up there with them!)

The most amazing part is that this is most definitely NOT a suspense novel, the pace, in fact, is pretty slow, somewhat contemplative; however, it is narrated in such a peculiar way, with such beautiful turns of phrases, the characters (even minor ones) are fully fleshed and alive, that one is just immersed in the story, in the events of the boy, his pretty girl and their tales "in rising Asia," that it is impossible to put it down unless a fire breaks out in the house (and even then, I suspect most would first check if it's really that *serious* a fire).

I honestly don't want to spoil it, so I won't say much, but there are so many little quirks, that make reading this novel... well, "delightful" is the only word that comes to mind - I think of the time I've spent reading it, and I'm happy, I think it was time well-spent.

How brave is Mohsin Hamid. Forget the self-help element of the book - as he himself dismisses it at the outset: "Look, unless you're writing one, a self-help book is an oxymoron. You read a self-help book so someone who isn't yourself can help you, that someone being the author."

The really brave thing about this book is that it's written in the second person. I'm not sure I've ever come across this before and, to begin with, I wasn't sure I was going to like it. But Mohsin Hamid carries it off with brio, with sustained skill, with genuine insight and, above all, with tenderness.

Although it is indeed about a boy trying to lift himself up from squalor to success, the thread of the story that pulls at your heart-strings is the love story between "the pretty lady" and "the little boy" (as she calls him). We never get to know their names nor the names of the cities in which they live nor the name of the country in which the novel is set. It could be all cities, all countries, all couples. A wonderful, wonderful read.

How brave is Mohsin Hamid. Forget the self-help element of the book - as he himself dismisses it at the outset: "Look, unless you're writing one, a self-help book is an oxymoron. You read a self-help book so someone who isn't yourself can help you, that someone being the author."

The really brave thing about this book is that it's written in the second person. I'm not sure I've ever come across this before and, to begin with, I wasn't sure I was going to like it. But Mohsin Hamid carries it off with brio, with sustained skill, with genuine insight and, above all, with tenderness.

Although it is indeed about a boy trying to lift himself up from squalor to success, the thread of the story that pulls at your heart-strings is the love story between "the pretty lady" and "the little boy" (as she calls him). We never get to know their names nor the names of the cities in which they live nor the name of the country in which the novel is set. It could be all cities, all countries, all couples. A wonderful, wonderful read.

This book is written so well, but the audio reader doesn’t do it justice. Often, when the author reads his own book, I find that he doesn’t add the emotional texture that a professional reader usually does, which makes an audiobook a “theater of the mind” for me. Hamid’s voice droned on in a monotone, perhaps because he read it as the instructional book it was supposedly intended to be, rather than as the underlying love story between the two main characters, two individuals trying to rise to the top of the world in their own distinctive way. If the book had been longer, I might have given it up altogether. It was the beauty of the narrative which flowed smoothly and eloquently, that held my attention and kept me listening, and also, it was the intriguing dual narrative of a handbook and a life story.
The book is meant to advise its reader on how to make his fortune in Asia. It is the story of a poor young man and a “pretty young girl” with whom he has an on and off friendship/affair throughout his life. Both characters are well developed and the psychology of their behavior is subtly and richly explored. The characters have no names, and where they live is unidentifiable. They exist in their moment of time, each pursuing their dream, as the world moves on around them, and often, even without them, somewhere in Asia. The culture described in Asia is different than mine, and what is considered acceptable there, even though it is sometimes dishonorable behavior, would be completely unacceptable where I live.
The book begins with the view of a very sick young child, a young boy who dreams of being “filthy rich”. Born into poverty, he attains success and prospers over the years by being rather unscrupulous in his single-minded approach to getting rich. He does anything and everything necessary to achieve his purpose. Although he is not ethical in business (a fact the author makes known is a quality necessary for success), he is compassionate toward his family and supports the surviving members with his fortune, so he is not without virtuous qualities.
This is the story of his rise to the pinnacle of his career and then his ultimate fall from grace, betrayed by those he knows, those he has helped, and those who are jealous of him and want to climb to success on the back of his failure when he is at his most vulnerable and more in need of kindness than sabotage, but this is a practice considered normal in his world. This behavior is the nature of the beast in search of wealth and power. Everyone seems to wait for the opportunity to take from those above them, and it seems to be a conventional practice, not even condemned by those who are robbed, for after all, they view the thieves as those in need, they view the crime as one they themselves would commit in similar circumstances. It is an odd juxtaposition of immorality and morality, compassion and cruelty. It seems like the personification of schadenfreude, at its worst. The victim accepts his victimization by those who destroy him, as if it is their right, and they don’t look back! They enjoy the fruits of their contemptible behavior without shame or remorse. They consider it their reward for their years of loyal service to the person they defraud.
When this boy who has now become an old man, finds that his past behavior has caught up with him, he doesn’t seem to mind. Age and illness have mellowed him, as it has also mellowed “the pretty girl” he treasured his whole life, the “girl who rose to stardom and fame, but who still came in and out of his life over the years, cultivating a hunger within him that he could not dispossess. In the final part of the book, their love story comes to fruition in a close and warm friendship. They share an apartment and offer comfort to each other in their waning days. She precedes him in death and the conclusion is somewhat mystical and spiritual, as he finds true happiness with her in his imagination.
Is the effort to be rich above all else truly worth it, if, in fact, when you lose it all, it is really of little consequence? If you have become fragile and old and your needs have changed, are your riches any longer of much use, or is the friendship of someone you care about and who cares about you of greater importance? Should that not always be more essential to one’s life?

What an entertainingly clever literary effort this is. Trace someone's life story as chapters in a faux self-help book promising ways to make it in a rising, but corrupt Asian country (probably India or Pakistan), all written in the second person. Meanwhile, insert generous but acerbic social commentary on the ill effects of globalization dished with abundant humor while also describing how the unnamed protagonist learns the life lessons that serve as chapter headings. So, for example, one, he leaves as a youth for the overcrowded unruly dangerous city, two, gets what passes for an education from an inept teacher, three, learns the distraction caused by falling in love, four, avoids idealists, and so on. An unrequited love interest hovers throughout, and we learn that she, aka "the pretty girl," has had an equally eventful arc of a life beginning from impoverished roots. Will they ever get together?

The author provides keen insights into the cultural and conflicting societal issues present in an emerging economy where there are no real constraints on a winner take all capitalist system except those imposed by bribery and crime. And don't forget the environmental desecration
and inadequate infrastructure associated with unfettered and unregulated growth. No wonder someone from humble origins entering these waters (no plot clue intended) requires the advice provided by this mock serious self-help book! No need to lecture or harangue on the plight of and obstacles to those attempting to succeed in this world when the story is infused with the author's highly original format, humor, and perceptive observations. Could not put it down.

I loved this book, which has a sensationalist misleading title. You'd think it was a business book. Really, it's a well crafted "first person" fiction book.

It's the human story of a boy starting in a slum in India, struggling with the challenges of achievement, love, conflict and death.

The author writes the book as if you are the lead character, giving it a very unique quality that I've never experienced in a book before.

This book evoked an emotional response from me on more than one occasion, by the end I was tearing up...not out of sadness though.

It made me laugh out loud a few times.

Highly recommend it. You can finish it in a weekend.

I haven't read Pakistani author Hamid's first two novels (Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist), but after reading this, I'm very inclined to seek them out. Here, he makes three and a half interesting choices in the telling of a straightforward rags-to-riches story, all of which succeed in the service of the story he's telling about life in modern "Rising Asia."

The first and second choice are somewhat interrelated: the book is written in the framework of the self-help genre (which is a booming one in many parts of the world, not just the West), and as such, is written in the second person. The self-help framework lays out each chapter as a step up the ladder toward the penthouse of wealth, each accompanied by its own hardships, degradation, compromises, and deference/capitulation to the more powerful capitalists above one. When linked together, the chapter titles chart a twelve-step path to riches worthy of any self-help "system": Move to the City --> Get an Education --> Don't Fall in Love --> Avoid Idealists --> Learn From a Master --> Work For Yourself --> Be Prepared To Use Violence --> Befriend a Bureaucrat --> Patronize the Artists of War --> Dance With Debt --> Focus on the Fundamentals --> Have an Exit Strategy. Of course, despite the clear path -- not everything quite goes according to plan as messy things like feelings occasionally intrude.

The third choice is a much more daring one -- the story of the sixty-some years from rags to riches does not in any way correspond to linear time. For example, in the second and third chapters, the subject of the story is a teenager working for a DVD rental store. DVDs didn't appear until 1995, and almost certainly didn't achieve widespread use in Pakistan for at least five years, so if the subject's life story unfolded in conventional time, the final chapters would be taking place somewhere around 2050 or so. Instead, the book appears to hover in the same setting, somewhere between 2001 and 2011 or so even as the protagonist ages. The final half-choice is the book's brevity, clocking in at a generous 200 pages, even with ample line spacing. I say half-choice because who knows if the author set out with the intention of writing something short, but it's a breath of fresh air to me whenever I find a compelling story that clocks in at under 350 pages.

When I pick up a book with glowing blurbs on the cover from literary luminaries ranging from Philip Pullman to Dave Eggers, I am instantly put on a alert and don my skeptic goggles. However, this is a book that fully deserves the praise. It's not a book that's going to open your eyes if you're someone who is paying attention to the lives of people in the wider world, but its depiction of what success looks like and takes in "rising Asia" is inventively crafted and best of all, a fun and quick read.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is Mohsin Hamid's third novel. I loved his first novel (Moth Smoke) for its expose of the ecstasy set of Lahore (at the time, I had no idea this scene existed anywhere in Asia, let alone Pakistan). I liked his second (The Reluctant Fundamentalist) for its subtle smart outline of religious becoming, and the crisp confident dialogue. HtGFRiRS veers into entirely different territory (the life story of a man in an unnamed megacity in Asia) armed with two conceits: second person POV and a structure like a self help support guide. ("1. Move to the city, 2. Get an education, 3. Don't fall in love…")

"You control your instinct to glance away, attempting instead to balance on that crumbly ledge between staring and shiftiness."

"…the mist shrouded high-altitude spawning pond to your inner salmon."

Mr. Hamid pulls off both conceits brilliantly. He infuses the corporate and clinical vernacular of self help guides with razor sharp wit, precise and often beautiful language, and unerring human psychology. I found myself moved to tears by the end, by the longing that can linger from a first and early love well into old age.

"He whispers a benediction and breathes it into the air, spreading his hopes for you with a contraction of the lungs."

"…if there will ever arrive a day she is not repelled by the notion of binding herself permanently to a man."

Every character in HtGFRiRS is deeply realised and fascinating, and the prose and plot are so funny and real and readable that I blew through the book in a matter of days (my sister finished it within hours - it's a super fast read). The setting can perhaps be traced to a city in Pakistan (Islamabad?), but so much of it makes sense to many other Asian cities: Dhaka, Bombay, Shanghai, Bangkok, etc. Mr. Hamid does a great job of binding together these disparate places with the racing pulse of development and ambition.

"…land that only a few years ago aerial photography would have shown puffed over with opulent pastryesque villas."

"We are all refugees from our childhoods."

HtGFRiRS is smart and thoughtful, sweet, sharp, and confident. I highly recommend it.

Reviews in newspapers have been full of praise for this book. Mohsin Hamid’s earlier books have been well written and thought provoking. Like many other authors, Hamid has not been able to sustain the same standard in this book. But it is possibly because of his name that reviews have been so praiseworthy.

The reader is very much reminded about Arvind Adiga’s White Tiger, and from the point of supporting Hamid’s book title, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, The White Tiger is a better book. While Hamid does look at aspects of how one can get rich, that is not his only aim. He is quite keen to show how a relationship between a man and a woman develops, wanes and then becomes strong again, and shows strong elements of getting rich but it somewhat dilutes the main thrust of the book.

The book is written in an interesting style. Each chapter takes on a particular theme and shows whether that theme is helpful to becoming rich or not. Some of the points he makes are very plausible. But he also looks at what happens when something goes wrong and you lose your wealth, or you lose your wealth because your career is based on youth, beauty or some such factor that will inevitably change. He tries to make it a self help guide but is not completely convincing.

In some ways the reader feels that Hamid developed the story as he was writing it, rather than having a clear idea as to what he wanted to go into the book. A shame as he is a talented writer and can be innovative in his style.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is the best book I've read this year because it made me think and then it made me cry. For a book with such a coarsely straightforward title, it's remarkably beautiful; a love story (in a book whose third chapter title instructs: "Don't Fall in Love") about the power of connections between people.

That sounds rather trite, non? Yet this book made it seem like the most novel idea in the world. Mohsin Hamid chooses to write his simple story under the guise of a self-help book. We readers are addressed as "you" but "you" is also the main character, an Asian male we follow from birth to death as he becomes filthy rich. It's an inventive method of narration that will likely fail for many people, but I found it inspired in the way it both separates and unites the reader and protagonist. As both the protagonist and an outsider, we can observe the protagonist's failures with the detachment of someone who knows better, all the while suffering, and occasionally rejoicing, alongside him. We are complicit in his choices and thus, after reading, we feel compelled to evaluate our own choices.

In tone, it reminded me of Kazuo Ishiguro's masterpiece The Remains of the Day. Both novels feature men who devote their lives to an occupation and realize, too late, the unworthiness of their chosen lives. Hamid's writing is less formal though no less moving. It's clever--

"Is getting filthy rich still your goal above all goals, your be-all and end-all, the mist-shrouded high-altitude spawning pond to your inner salmon?"

And beautiful--

"He whispers a benediction and breathes it into the air, spreading his hopes for you with a contraction of the lungs."

He uses lots of appositives to pack complex asides into otherwise short and simple sentences. It's masterful, simply some of the best writing I've ever read.

Hamid also has the most fascinating things to say about the relationship between a writer and a reader and the importance of writing and reading to our lives. Do you read this and nod so deeply your skull grazes the nape of your neck?

"...When you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create. It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book becomes one of a million different books, just as an egg becomes one of potentially a million different people when it's approached by a hard-swimming and frisky school of sperm."

I do. He just gets it. He profoundly understands the importance of stories to our every day lives:

"We are all refugees from our childhoods. And so we turn, among other things, to stories. To write a story, to read a story, is to be a refugee from the state of refugees. Writers and readers seek a solution to the problem that time passes, that those who have gone are gone and those who will go, which is to say every one of us, will go. For there was a moment when anything was possible. And there will be a moment when nothing is possible. But in between we can create."

He accomplishes so much in so few pages, poking the most thoughtful parts of my brain and pushing me to change the way I approach life. Before reading How To Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia I would see all the people around me and feel crushed that their stories will never be told, that upon death their stories will dissipate into the air like the morning dew rising from their graves. Mohsin Hamid reminded me that everyone has a story that should be remembered. He made me want to travel the world with a butterfly net collecting stories so that peoples' lives--peoples' immense and tragic and brilliant lives--do not die with them. He made me realize that empathy is not only the fruitful consequence of good literature but also the motor of the human spirit.

I picked up Mohsin Hamid's newest book "Filthy Rich" after reading both of his other outstanding books--Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Each of those books was slightly "different" in terms of how he laid out the book and its writing so I was prepared for something equally quirky. Filthy Rich didn't disappoint. The subject of the book is "You" which is both personal and impersonal in the sense that the reader feels as if Mohsin is talking to him but also you remain somewhat detached from the protagonist of the book. The idea of the book is that in 12 easy steps, Hamid is going to show you how to get filthy rich. From very humble beginnings You start off learning how to make a living working in quite a shady business selling re-labelled food. You move from that to starting your own shady repackaged "pure" water business. All the while you are in love with a beautiful woman who deflowered you when you were younger. You get married--not to that woman--and have a child who over the years becomes detached from you and your wife who you also become detached from. I won't spoil the ending but suffice it to say that being filthy rich is not all it is made out to be. I thought this was a very solid book that all Mohsin Hamid writers will enjoy.

This book revolves about an unnamed character, which the author directly refers to as 'you'. It is written in the same style as a conventional self-help book, a style that I've yet to see an author attempt to do - something that Hamid should be given credit for. The character navigates himself through a world that closely resembles a developing Asian city, one that has barely escaped its pre-capitalist feudal past and has had modernity imposed on it. This mix gives you broken institutions, corrupt bureaucrats, militant fanaticism and so on. Some of the book's chapters borrows it's name from these things so vividly described in this book. The character meets a pretty girl, who continuously makes appearances in this book as his love interest, even after 'you' have been married. They reunite every now and then during 'your' quest to achieve the stated goal of the book i.e. to get "filthy rich".

I won't talk about the story much, because that is what the book is for. The book was fairly captivating, but at some times the language became dull and I couldn't help putting the book down. As a Pakistani reader, it wasn't hard to notice that it is challenging to describe a world that exists culturally in Urdu (its hard to miss that the unnamed city in this book is Karachi or Lahore) or any Asian language and describe it through the English language. Most attempts at doing that are difficult and I give Mohsin Hamid extra points for that - although I must admit it does make me feel a slight disconnect between his descriptions and the world he is trying to describe. Overall, I enjoyed the book and was pleased with its length that was pretty much adequate to deliver his message. It was an improvement from The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which despite its short length did not manage to captivate me due to the writing style.

I still think his first novel, Moth Smoke was absolutely brilliant and his subsequent two novels haven't managed to give the same experience that I got from his first novel. If you haven't read it - I suggest you pick it up before you pick TRF or HTGFRIR to save yourself from some disappointment.

You are considering buying a work by Mohsin Hamid. Something about the length and odd construction of the title puts you off. And then there on the cover is that goldfish -- what is up with the goldfish? So you are no doubt thinking to yourself, should I buy this novel, "How To Get Filthy Rich In Asia"? Is it a novel for you?

Such decisions can be difficult. On the plus side, the work isn't very long and the page on the store does just ooze positive reviews. And on the negative side? Well the idea of a novel written as a self-help book seems off putting. I know. And likely not being in Rising Asia, how concerned are you really about how to get Filthy Rich should you find yourself there?

So let me put your mind at ease. Yes, Hamid writes from a perspective best described as unusual. He constructed his brilliant second novel, "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," as one side of a conversation in a cafe between a Fundamentalist Muslim who has in the West found material success and the darker side of the American Dream and a stranger who may or may not be a CIA agent. Oh, and the narrator may or may not be violent and interested in doing that stranger -- continually and disturbingly referred to as "you" as if the reader -- real harm. Sound interesting? You'll just have to trust me, it was an extraordinary read.

As for "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia," the novel's construction may seem odder still. Written in the second person and constructed as a mock self help book, the narrative follows an unnamed boy in an unnamed country as he pursues wealth in his unnamed city. Despite the failure to name the location, you may well conclude pretty quickly that it is somewhere on the subcontinent. While letting this structure carry you away may take a dozen pages or so, you can take my word that soon enough you will find yourself carried away by Hamid's smooth prose, his disarming sense of humor, and his preternatural ability to individualize characters who he rather brutally fails even to name.

Oh, and did I mention to you the other excellent components of the narrative? Family strife. Violence. A romance. A look at the dark underbelly of corruption in much of the world? Bottled water? So why should you buy "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia"? Because it is sure to be one of the year's finest novels and you don't want to find yourself at a party forced to lie when all your friends are discussing its excellence.

Yes, it is that good. So why don't you add it to your cart already?

How to Get Filthy Rich in Ris­ing Asia by Mohsin Hamid is a fic­tional book in guise of a self-help book (but with a story). Mr. Hamid has writ­ten two pre­vi­ous books which were very well received, how­ever this is the first book I have read from his pen.

An uniden­ti­fied pro­tag­o­nist works towards his dream of becom­ing filthy rich. His jour­ney from a poor boy to a cor­po­rate leader is chron­i­cled in this book shaped as a busi­ness self-help book.

How­ever, this young man can­not help but think about a pretty girl he once encoun­tered. The pretty girl's path is cross­ing with his rise in the busi­ness world through­out their lives.

At first I was a bit taken aback by the for­mat of How to Get Filthy Rich in Ris­ing Asia by Mohsin Hamid, but I kept on read­ing as the novel expended into the uni­verse of an unnamed pro­tag­o­nist and his rise in the busi­ness world of Asia. Once I got used to the for­mat and the writ­ing style, I found a delight­ful book with a sim­ple, yet rapid story full of love and hope.

In between each chap­ter a decade or so passes, the reader is left to fig­ure out the blanks (it's not dif­fi­cult). We meet our pro­tag­o­nist when he's a young boy, next a teen, a man at the start of his career, soon we jump to meet him as a mar­ried busi­ness­man (with­out any men­tion of the wife pre­vi­ously), etc. - you get the idea. A life in chap­ters, each chap­ter starts with a sup­posed busi­ness les­son, but the author inter­weaves busi­ness with a full life filled with love, hap­pi­ness and regrets.

The more I read How to Get Filthy Rich in Ris­ing Asia, the more I real­ized how our own lives can be sim­ply told in chap­ter head­ings. I'm sure many peo­ple think of their lives in such a way, divided into mem­o­rable and / or impor­tant events. For myself I found that life's chap­ter head­ings are not always what you would imag­ine. For exam­ple I remem­ber the moment I told my par­ents I'd be join­ing the Army much clearer then the whole expe­ri­ence itself.

The novel takes a cyn­i­cal and sar­donic look at a devel­op­ing nation with all it's quirks, pos­i­tives and neg­a­tives aspects. The book helped me under­stand the real­ity in which peo­ple live, their strug­gles and pro­vided a per­sonal, despite the anonymity, story behind local eco­nomic forces. In Hamid's world there is no "mak­ing do", you either make it or you don't using what­ever means are at your dis­posal (rich par­ents, con­nec­tions, bribes -- all which are cov­ered in the "man­ual") while lux­u­ries such as love and friend­ship are sim­ply in the way.

Early in Mohsin Hamid's new book the narrator raises the specter of "[reading] that much-praised, breathtakingly boring foreign novel, slogging through page after page after please-make-it-stop page of tar-slow prose and blush-inducing formal conceit... out of an impulse to understand distant lands that because of globalization are increasingly affecting life in your own." HOW TO GET FILTHY RICH IN RISING ASIA both is and emphatically is not that novel. The prose is certainly not tar-slow, and the formal conceit, whatever else one might call it, is not blush-inducing. But the impulse to understand distant lands may well be what makes many readers pick up this heartfelt humanist parody of self-help nonfiction. And it is as an overview of a place and the lives of its people, rather than as a formal experiment or a character study, that this novel is most successful.

Each of its twelve chapters is titled with a piece of pithy self-help advice: "move to the city," "get an education," and so on. The text then described how "you," the second-person protagonist, eventually learn the value of that advice. From your less than auspicious beginnings in a rural village where life hasn't changed much in hundreds of years, you learn to navigate the networks of corruption, cruelty, and crime that drive business in the unspecified country where you live. You aren't the only protagonist, though; there's also "the pretty girl," on whom you have a childhood crush and whose life occasionally intersects with yours as a way of offering a second perspective on economic success in "rising Asia." Neither you nor the pretty girl is an especially round character, I'm afraid. Nor do you age normally; judging by the technology, it's the present day when you're teenagers, and still the present day when you're elderly. But don't be too upset: that just makes it easier for you to serve your narrative function as a guide to the paradoxes of contemporary life. And if you're not the richest character in literary history, you have more than enough depth for your purpose, and what else can a person expect?

The prose is lively and ironic, fast-paced, more concerned with highlighting ironies and tragedies than with creating traditional sense of place. At times one may find oneself wishing for a little of that "tar-slow" attention to detail, but there's no denying the elegant construction of Hamid's compulsively-readable sentences. The self-help conceit, useful as a structural principle, gives rise to airy thematic meditations that cover well-worn ground (all books are self-help; we are all information), but they're too brief to become a major drawback. Where Hamid triumphs is in capturing how the language, methods, and superficial prosperity of Western capitalism can exist side-by-side with sudden violence, rampant disease, and political instability. The injustices of "rising Asia" are of course not unique to that setting; horrors different in degree but not in kind can be found anywhere. But the contradictions are especially striking in this milieu, and Hamid has laid them out in a story that also reflects how basic human impulses find expression no matter the circumstances. "You" struggle as anyone might with how to express and live up to the love and devotion you feel for those around you. It is precisely their lack of depth, the simplicity even of their faults, that makes the protagonists of HOW TO GET FILTHY RICH IN RISING ASIA so purely sympathetic. The note of universal kindness on which Hamid ends doesn't quite work as a matter of style, but the sensibility behind that moment is the secret of the novel's success.

Perhaps "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" does too good a job of pitching itself as a self-help book for financial success. Perhaps the gimmicky use of second person narrative is just too distracting. Perhaps the unrefined tone is just too jarring for those seeking something more literary from acclaimed author Mohsin Hamid. I suggest this because I'm surprised by how many reviewers seem to have missed the heart of this book.

As a framework for the novel, a fictional author has penned a highly informal self-help book that traces the life of a self-made man from adolescence to death. But despite the novel's own musings about what a self-help book is and its chapter titles which could easily be headings for such a book, the story isn't what it represents itself to be. The structure is just a relatively creative narrative style to recount a life (and interconnected lives) in a fairly anonymous and anecdotal manner. The book is more biography than self-help.

The crass tone of the fictional author's account is a little jarring. The unsuspecting reader is frequently assailed with crude references like wet or gurgling farts, defecation, or nasal residue. Can you guess what he's describing here: "muscular grunting, fleshy impact, traumatized respiration, and hydraulic suction"? The lack of refinement can be discomforting and possibly alienating. But there's a method to the madness even if it offends the reader's sensibilities.

Hopefully not lost in the artifice and tone are the searing and insightful critiques included so casually throughout. No less than ten times did I make special note of some poignant expression or description that resonated very deeply. The narrator looks past the "excoriating tone" of an insult to see what else lies beneath. He attributes a magical power to physicians who can "kill in the future by uttering mysterious words today." He starkly captures the difference in viewpoint on a sexual partner where one sees his first and last and another sees only a number between first and third. Most compelling of all are the numerous statements about life, growing old, and death. Of course there's something also to be said for the commentary on intimacy and relationships. Hamid has gifted us with a work of depth and profound meaning.

He also highlights and decries social ills through the experiences of the characters. The book naturally includes issues like bribery, corruption, poverty, alcoholism, gambling, usury, and crime. But he also turns a critical eye on uncaring teachers, bartering with sexuality, the availability of education and healthcare, arranged marriage, medical quackery, and cheating. While the book isn't didactic, it's impossible not to see and be touched by the evil oppressing the characters. It's equally impossible not to acknowledge its presence in the real world.

Hamid has penned a bittersweet little book (it's only 250 very quick pages). The structure is neither uniquely clever nor too clever. Look past the structure to the content. That's where "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" truly shines.

Five stars are granted to exceptional books only and this is one. This is a deep, often emotionally-moving and beautifully-crafted and -written novel about how to make a fortune in rising Asia. It is written as a parody of self help books. Each highly amusing and instructive chapter deals with another challenge and its solution for anyone living with this burning ambition. But attentive readers know, like the author, that Pakistan is not part of the new, rising Asia....
Pakistan is divided into tribes and clans and ruled by politicians paid by landowners who pay no taxes. Therefore, everything always stays as before, except for alarming population growth and depletion of ground water, rising crime, instability and religious intolerance. Doing business there means bribing one's way towards the ultimate grantor of a permit, license, exemption, or whatever.
This is also a family history of an underprivileged, but highly intelligent son of a migrated peasant, trying his luck in the megacity of Lahore (pop: 6.3 million, more than e.g. the kingdom of Norway). It is also a biography of the same nameless, tough, but also compassionate man who almost became stinking rich, but stumbled. And a record of a life-long infatuation with a girl with whom he will spend his final years. Becoming stinking rich by what means? Ultimately, his industrial company of extracting, treating and marketing drinking water ran into political problems... What darker prospect for private enterprise in Pakistan can be painted?
Scary novel about Pakistani governance. Brilliantly plotted and written. Read this book.

Even after reading raving reviews I didn't think I wanted to read this book as I thought the title was cynical and figured the entire book would be just a cynical and sharp attack on capitalism and any one's desire to "get ahead." I was wrong. Thankfully, a reading friend brought the book to me and said "read this." I must admit, it took me just a bit to get into the format of the writer addressing "you". It takes a very skilled writer to be able to pull this off with interest, humor, a splash of pathos leaving the reader plenty to think about.

I assumed that the "self-help" format of this book would be one of a modern style of writing with bullets, short paragraphs, e-mails, tweets, etc. Seems more and more writers are taking this type of approach. However, this reads like a novel; there isn't any of that quirky stylistic writing. The sentences make sense; the author uses the correct punctuation including quotation marks (another thing that seems to be going by the wayside of many modern writers), and it has great chapter titles. Yes, the narrator is talking to "you", but that works.

I loved this story. There is just something about it that will remain with me. Yes, it is set in "rising Asia" somewhere and I don't know who "you" is. But there is something very universal about "you." What does it really take to rise from poverty to worldly riches? What role does family play in our lives? How much would we sacrifice for wealth? What does it mean to be rich? Is that different than "filthy rich"?

Many commented that the "you" in the story is not very likable. True, but he is certainly believable. And, the ending demonstrates that he must have dome something right along the way. Life is complicated and perhaps even more so in a complicated society of ancient Asia entering a highly technical and modern world. This novels paints a picture of that complication. Furthermore, the use of the water industry as the main character's path to riches was brilliant. Gives the reader plenty to think about.

"How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" is a first-hand look at a typical life on the Indian sub-continent.

Following the intertwining life of the unnamed male main character and "the pretty girl" from his neighborhood, author Mohsin Hamid brings to outsiders a first-hand look at what it means to grow up in one of the huge and sprawling cities of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc. Hamid's style is indeed clever as the tale is told in the style of a self-help book.

But in using this style and keeping the characters nameless, we see the author using these two facets of the story as tools to deliver his main premise of the book: to highlight the struggle of the poor in Asia to find success and security against incredibly challenging odds. The nameless protagonist works hard as a delivery boy, then a salesman selling just-expired but altered canned goods to eventually become a successful self-made businessman. But this is especially illustrated in the matter-of-fact manner in which the reader is told the decisions a very young pretty girl makes in order to get herself out of her neighborhood slum.

"How to Get Rich" shows the harshness of life in developing Asia through the examples of pervasive corruption, exploitation and the not-uncommon use of violence to protect or expand business interests. It also portrays some incredible strengths of family and culture such as when the protagonists' nephews take care of him when his business is embezzled into extinction, and how he and the pretty girl come together late in their lives. Mohsin Hamid's latest work should be read by anyone with a personal or professional interest in the subcontinent and how it ticks.

Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a somewhat conventional tale of social rise and fall disguised in the more original format of a self-help book. The hero, who is just called ‘you’, begins as the son of poor peasants, makes it to the city, becomes a business boss, and rises to ‘filthy rich’ status. On and off, he pursues a romantic interest, the ‘pretty girl’, who turns out to be just as ruthless and determined as he is and, for a while a kept woman, goes for a career in the fashion world.

Rising Asia, meanwhile, based on the characters and places described, can only be India or Pakistan, not China, certainly, or even a Southeast Asian country. Hamid’s writing strikes a balance between sarcasm and the faux-optimistic tone of the self-help genre, while at the same time leaving place for the personal, the psychological, the more poignant. This makes the book work as a novel while allowing time to stand still, as it would do in an actual self-help book, so that Hamid’s social critique remains focused on contemporary Asia. Indeed, the character ends the story at eighty-or-so years old – had the story’s setting aged with him, it would have had to start back in colonial times. Hamid is an accomplished writer, and his novel is at once intriguing, entertaining, and a moving story.

Inside Mohsin Hamid's "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" is a bitter-sweet love story disguised as a self help book. It's a well structured concept and works nicely. Each chapter is presented in the format of those common to the self help genre, with advice like "Move to the City", "Get an Education" etc, although the chapter entitled "Be Prepared to Use Violence" is a notable omission from most business tomes and self help books. After some general chatty comments in the self help book style, the attention turns to two people who are named only "the boy" and "the pretty girl", charting their rise and fall from rural poverty in an unnamed Asian country (although it certainly feels like Pakistan) to business success and wealth in the city. The two are not a couple, but their lives cross at frequent times and he, in particular, remains infatuated with his childhood acquaintance.

Some novels that use concepts like this can feel forced, but this never does, largely because the self help advice is fairly similar to an author's structure for plot development. In fact, it may well be that this is a true self help book in that the self it most helps is the writer's. Ultimately the structure feels like it serves the story rather than the other way around.

In addition to some acute and often amusing observations about social conditions in the region, the book is a touching story of love and ambition. "The boy" and "the pretty girl" may be unusually fortunate in their abilities to rise to the top and become "filthy rich" in Asia, the obstacles they have to overcome to achieve this are amongst the same challenges for most people in the region and the chaos of the urban development in particular is beautifully presented.

It is by no means a long book. The page count is modest and it's a book that you can comfortably read in one or two sittings. The story flies by and is somewhat episodic as the "boy" in particular, who is the main focus of the story, faces the challenges laid out in the self help book. But for all the social comment and business development of the plot, what I will remember this book as most is a superbly touching love story. For much of the book, the lives of "the boy" and "the pretty girl" are separate but in the moments where they collide, the book positively soars.

The ending of the book is beautifully judged and provides some of the most enduring images from the story. I simply wished the book were longer. Definitely a book you should help yourself to although the brevity of the book would lead me to suggest waiting for the lower cost paperback rather than the hardback version which I read, unless of course you have followed the book's advice and become filthy rich in rising Asia.

This clever and enjoyable novel is constructed around an authorial wink. The novel, told entirely in the second person, follows an unnamed narrator who lives in a country that looks a lot like Pakistan. Beginning as an impoverished village boy, he migrates to the city and joins millions of his countrymen in an attempt, through hard work, cleverness, and sheer nerve, along with (as he prospers) bribery, deception, and violence, to rise from his beginnings. Hence, the chapters are structured on some tenet of a business self-help book: "Move to the City, "Don't Fall in Love," Learn From a Master," and so on. The wink comes in the author's knowledge that readers in places like the United States might also be looking for some "self-help" in understanding a particular part of the world.

Without giving away the novel's last few self-help principles, it is fair to say that they move away from the business model and toward an exploration of human dignity in an economic culture that leaves the poor, which is to say most people, "with their faces pressed to that clear window on wealth afforded by ubiquitous television." It's a conclusion that is a commentary on avarice and on human desires, whether in an unnamed country in the so-called developed world or in other countries that consider themselves a good deal more developed.

M. Feldman

This novel is structured like a self-help book - complete with 12 chapters, such as "Move to the City", "Get and Education" and "Don't Fall in Love". These 12 chapters/steps are illustrated through the life of the unnamed narrator who has moved to an unnamed city, attended an unnamed university, etc. and are addressed to "you".

The unnamed Asian city the unnamed narrator has moved to from the country has a population larger than some countries and this population increases by the number of people living in island nations. The government is weak, so there are chapters on violence, and bribes. Marriages are arranged and drones are present in this country.

The author writes about his two parents, his brother and his sister. There are relatives he must hire including those of his wife. There is a pretty girl with whom he has a unique connection. None of these characters has a name. Like the unnamed city and the unnamed narrator, the lack of names strengthens the universality of the story.

If I hadn't read Hamid's earlier works, I might have put this down. There were some pretty crude descriptions in the first 50 or so pages. I stayed with it and was glad I did. His artful prose takes you through the full life cycle of "You", the entrepreneur, and how your life could evolve if you try to get filthy rich in rising Asia.

If you want to read good literature in English nowadays, go to those of the former British colonies that won their freedom in the twentieth century. Nobody else is writing anything of interest in English these days. (Except Zadie Smith who is a rare and strange exception.)

One of the most interesting writers who publish fiction in English today is Mohsin Hamid. I initially discovered him through his wonderful novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Now he has published another great novel that is even better than his last one.

Hamid has an amazing talent for constructing a narrative. When his novel was first delivered to me, I decided to leave it aside for when the semester ends and I am less busy. So I was only going to take a glance on the first paragraph to see what the book was like. That was my downfall because one cannot possibly put the book aside after beginning to read it. I forgot about everything I had to do and lost myself in the book.

Unlike British and American post-modernists whose constipated attempts at formal experimentation always make their novels clunky and indigestible, Mohsin Hamid's writing style is elegant and beautiful. You can feel that it comes naturally to him, unlike to the British and American post-modernists whose writing is so tortured and forced as to cause me to feel vicarious shame for people who try so desperately to massage themselves into the kind of writing that does not suit them. (Except, yet again, Zadie Smith who is a rare and strange exception.)

If you want to acquaint yourself with a beautiful, enjoyable and profound post-modern novel, I recommend Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. It is not one of those meaningless post-modern pieces of writing. To the contrary, Hamid's novel offers one valuable insight after another.

One question that I kept asking myself as I was reading Hamid's novel was how come a male author from Lahore, Pakistan can write a novel without a trace of sexism when no Latin American writer I have ever encountered, whether male or female, has yet managed anything of the kind. The love story Hamid offers in his novel is so free of any taint of sexism that, for the first time in a long while, I enjoyed a fictional love story without once wincing in disgust. By the end of the novel, I was so touched that I was crying, and my tears were forming a little pool on the table.

In short, read Mohsin Hamid, people. He is definitely one of the best contemporary writers in the world. I have no doubt that this novel will be turned into a movie, but please don't watch it. The best part of Hamid's work is his beautiful writing. Without it, this will be nothing of interest.

I, like so many others, sought this book out because of a review on NPR. I was unfamiliar with the author so I cannot comment on whether “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia” is reflective of his other work. However, even though book was not for me, I now intend to read other work by Mohsin Hamid. How is that for a wishy-washy recommendation?

The characters were incredibly rich and interesting, but I wanted to know more of their feelings and be in their heads more.

The story was beautiful, but because it was told in second person I had difficulty connecting with it.

I could vividly see the landscape (which is unusual for me), but I felt frustrated that I was never in one place long enough to immerse myself in it.

SEE?! I’m completely torn. I wouldn’t read the book again, but this book challenged me, caused me to examine my own thoughts, and left me wanting to find out more. I was happy that I had the experience of reading it.

Mohsin Hamid's books are biting and raw in their nature of storytelling. Nothing is rosy and that his readers are aware of. Nothing is sugar-coated. He tells it the way it is and maybe that is why his readers like reading what he has to write. Hamid writes about the society, the way he sees it. Whether it is a story of a young man in love in his first book to a fundamentalist born out of probably no choice in his second to his latest offering, "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia", which is as raw and vicious as the other two.

The book is unusual in its writing and plot. It is a satire on the society told fictionally, through a self-help book format, with twelve rules in place on how to get filthy rich in rising Asia. It is the story of a young boy (unnamed but of course), born into a poor family. As he moves on from the village to a slum in the unnamed big city, his hopes and aspirations rise. He wants to be the very best. He wants to be rich and nothing else beyond that. As he rises through the success ladder, and sets up a bottled water factory, he realizes that everything but of course comes for a price. At the end of it all, there is one thing that remains constant in his life: His teenage love - he can never forget and yearns for all the time and all those years. The book is all about his life and the people in his life and the consequences of wanting to get "filthy rich" in rising Asia.

That in short is the plot of the book. The writing being sarcastic is highly humorous and at the same time leaves you with a sense of sadness as you turn the pages. Mohsin Hamid's writing is strong and packed with punches and surprises in almost every chapter. The reality of the situation is seen and at the same time, it tends to get boring at a couple of places, given the repetitive start to every chapter, which is that of a self-help book.

"How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" is a short book and yet touches on the complexities of living and surviving in big cities. It portrays the paradoxes that lie in "Rising Asia" and its impact on the so-called "class" system that exists. Like I said, Hamid does not shy away from saying and seeing things the way they are. The book is highly entertaining and also thought-provoking to a very large extent. A perfect read for a Sunday afternoon.

It was just a coincidence that I saw the movie The Great Gatsby when I was in Seattle recently and read Mohsin Hamid's "How to get filthy rich in rising Asia when I returned to Lucknow in India.I had read Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby about a few years earlier, and finished it with some sad sense of ending .The novel , the movie both are great .Mohsin Hamid 's book did remind me of Gatsby, and at many levels , it evoked similar feelings in .The book is about the rise and fall of the protagonist("You") in an Asian city..He succeeds in bringing about the flavour of a typically Asian city and people through his work.
Self-help books are very popular among poor but ambitious boys and girls in Asia. Mohsin has shaped his novel around this frame , and has created a riveting story of a poor ,boy based in a rural area of rising Asia .He traces his journey of becoming filthy rich as a corporate tycoon, controlling a huge , sprawling business of supplying bottled drinking water .His quest for wealth and love go together.The Pretty girl , on whom our nameless hero has consistently set eyes till the very end , also learns how girls become rich and famous in rising Asia .Their paths cross several times , each pursuing individual ambition to be rich , still loving each other , till in their twilight , they live together , till they reach their end , one after another .There are only three persons to attend the funeral of the Pretty girl , and later , about the same number for our hero.
The book has 228 pages and 12 chapters.Each chapter is based on a lesson in self-help;Move to the city;Get an education;Don't fall in love;Avoid idealists ;Learn from a master;Work for yourself;Be prepared to use violence;Befriend a bureaucrat;Patronize the artists of war;Dance with debt;Focus on the fundamentals;Have an exit strategy.The hero is "You". No character is named .The characters are addressed like pretty girl , politician , bureaucrat implying that there could be one or more such persons you may come across in daily life in rising Asia.But let us be clear :by no stretch of imagination , it is a self-help book .It is only that the protagonist is a struggling ,ambitious youth in rising Asia .The book is a first rate literary novel , based on this format of 12 self-help rules .The result is a book which is a thousand times more powerful than any self-help book could ever be.(In all honesty , I am not against reading self-help books .I am not one of those who make fun of those who read self-help books .But literary books are obviously a class apart , and no self-help book can ever come near any of these .
The book contains many instances of sacrifice of morality when a poor , rural youth is determined to be rich fast enough in rising Asia .These are dark sides of system, which need the attention of all of us , young and old , men and women alike.We need to provide in rising Asia clean opportunities , incentives and systems for our youth to rise, earn and achieve.
It is an extremely well written book of fiction which stays with us long after we have read it. .I strongly recommend you to read it .

The author of "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" styles the novel as a sort of self-help book of how to succeed in modern Asia as related by an undescribed third person narrator. It is a clever conceit.

The book has twelve chapters each laying out a guideline for success in business in modern Asia very similar to those guidelines available in any number of actual nonfiction business books geared to developing the next set of great entrepreneurs and blue-chip businessmen (and women.) The guidelines include "Get an Education," "Don't Fall in Love," "Avoid Idealists," "Work for Yourself," and similar others. The proud and confident protagonist of this book--an unnamed "you"--follows these guidelines to what one can call a successful business career.

Whether the successful business career also equates to a successful life is another question and that may be the essential theme of this book. Readers will have to judge for themselves how the protagonist, and the narrator, evaluate the life of the protagonist as he leaves his hardscrabble rural environment as a young man and makes his business career in the big city.

Learning the rules to being a business success as he goes along, he leaves his village and family behind, has an irregular, long-term, mostly distant relationship with a young model, sees his parents die, gets married and has a son, and maneuvers deftly through the poverty, crime, bizarre bureaucracy, and transformative economy of the (unnamed) Asian nation feeling its way in a global evolution.

Very much like "The White Tiger," by Aravind Adiga, Mr. Hamid describes the rich and complex textures of life in such an interesting, frustrating, and dynamic nation-the contrasts of rich and poor and city and country; the struggle to modernize; the range of personal strategies to survive (corruption, crime, deceit, entrepreneurship etc.); and the complex interplay of the survival instinct, ego, community, family, love, and meaning.

Amidst all of this texture and dynamism, there is opportunity for personal initiative and creativity. The twelve guides to success represent true principles of survival and advancement in rising Asia and in other similar primitive and capitalist environments. Yet, as the protagonist ages, suffers business and physical declines, both the protagonist and narrator seem to have doubts about their ultimate values.

There seems to be a hint of Herbert Marcuse's view of the dark side of business (capitalist) success here. The last chapter, called "Have an Exit Strategy" is especially moving, not merely because the protagonist and narrator become reflective and self-conscious, but because the reader will.

(FTC disclosure (16 CFR Part 255)): The reviewer has accepted a reviewer's copy of this book which is his to keep. He intends to provide an honest, independent, and fair evaluation of the book in all circumstances.)

The life of Hamid's unnamed protagonist touches every base of popular stereotypes (for the most part unfortunately too true) about life in South Asia. The poverty, corruption, aggressive ambition, dirty dealing, power plays and centrality of the extended family are all on display as formative influences. The writing is excellent and the asides are most often clever and occasionally "profound." I would have given the book five stars except for a feeling of Hamid having run out of steam just before the final couple of chapters, and a flaw inherent in the format of the novel. Specifically, since Hamid's supposedly writing a self-help manual,.all the scenarios he presents to the reader take place in the present day. But since the novel is also charting a specific man's life, having everything set in the present day is jarring--the eight year old of the first chapter lives in exactly the same world, with the same technology and popular culture, 70+ years later.

Told in second person and featuring an unnamed protagonist living in an unnamed country that seems to bear a lot of similarities to Pakistan HOW TO GET FILTHY RICH IN RISING ASIA is a cleverly conceived and constructed novel. The book has twelve chapters each of which tells a portion of the main character's life and struggles to succeed. The storyline begins with his impoverished youth in a small village and ends as he meets death as an old man. In between the man achieves great wealth often through the use of unscrupulous business practices. Eventually he loses a great deal of his fortune but is still able to live his old age in relative comfort. The story of a female friend from his teenaged years known in the novel only as "the pretty girl" parallels and at at times intersects with his own life.

The book is structured as an ironic self-help publication aimed at teaching successful business practices to young Asians. Each chapter has a title written in the style of such books that relates to the portion of the main character's life therein described. This unusual framing is skillfully utilized by author Moshin Hamid resulting in a quick, easy to access read. Interesting insight in to the lives and aspirations of those living in developing countries can be gleaned from this well rendered novel.

Mohsin Hamid's How To Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is an unexpected treat. I was drawn to the title and had somehow expected it to be set in China or Korea. My fault - I should have realized that it would be in South Asia.

The book is unusual in that it's written in the second person with such skill. We follow the story of a young rural boy whose luck and skill enable him to make fortunate choices. It starts from his gender and birth order. His less fortunate elder brother is pulled out of school to work as a house painter and his older sister is married instead of able to return to school. The boy makes full use of his education. He studies full time, works part time, learns how to sell, and with each new phase, he advances. Written as a self help book of sorts, the book captures a detached and humorous tone - keeps

The boy falls in love with a beautiful, spirited and ambitious young girl. The young girl leads an equally charmed life where her beauty, sacrifices, and skills bring her unexpected rewards.

While I enjoyed reading about the rise in their respective fortunes, what I most enjoyed about How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia was seeing how the lives of the young girl and boy would intertwine.

I can't say enough good things about this story. I got sucked in and couldnt wait for the next turn of events and there were many. I just loved the flow and the anticipation. Also loved how I never knew any names of people or places. Pretty Girl and all other persons introduced were nameless, but somehow I grew a very strong attachment to the people and places that were never mentioned. I'm not an author and cant say what style this type of story telling is but I loved it. I guess as the reader "I " am put into the position of the main character - reading a self help book - and through a monologue with the author of the self help book that " I" am reading I am reflecting on my own life.

Simply Brilliant and I have never had a more interesting reading experience. Slight inspiration can be felt (at least to me) from Slumdog Millionaire but that is only a good thing.

I will look for and highly anticipate more work from the Author Moshin Hamid. THANK YOU!!!

There's something about Hamid's latest book which sucks you in and won't let go. The unnamed protagonist, referred to in a surprisingly unjarring fashion throughout as 'you', struggles through life, from a slum somewhere in an equally unnamed country to a mansion. The riches he gains throughout his quest are far less appealing than the relationships he has with his family and the 'pretty girl' who benefits from a similar rags to riches type existence. The deft romance which is neither soppy nor lacking in credibility is almost breathtaking in its scope and seeming inevitability. Indeed, it's no less charming or poignant for the bittersweet relationship which the protagonist has with his wife. It would be easy to dismiss this story as a typical Cinderella type affair, but its scope and breadth are astounding and clever.

Hamid opens each chapter in the style of a self-help book, speaking in confiding tones to the reader and with a languidly seductive style. And yet there is considerable wit within these pages too. It's a short read, but one which covers every gamut of emotion and every aspect of life, from cradle to grave. Pessimism and optimism abound in virtually equal measures and you will be left thinking about this book for a long time to come.

"You, a poor village boy, want above all else to achieve fantastic wealth. Here, in twelve steps, is how to do so. Just please try not to lose your heart to that pretty girl along the way."

I became interested in this book after hearing an interview with the author on "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross. Sometimes, I listen to these interviews and conclude, well, who needs to read the book; I learned all I want to know.

With this interview, I was left with the desire to hear more from Mohsin Hamid, born in Lahore in 1971, educated at Princeton and Harvard, and who has lived in California and New York City but has returned to his home, Pakistan. Plus, I was curious as to how he would pull off the exceeding tricky use of second-person. Upon seeing a photo of Hamid at his website (where you can read his essays from over the years), I found appealing the certain intelligence and depth of compassion I saw in his eyes.

I found this book an absorbing, if discomfiting, read. As well it should be when reading about abject poverty and the driven ingenuity in attempting to overcome it.

This is the first of Moshin Hamid's books that I've read, but it won't be the last. I, a superslow reader, devoured this novel like a rapacious addict. Hamid's gift for pacing and language creates a narrative rich with warmth, pathos, humor and soul. His characters and settings are fully & sharply observed, and he does a masterful job of setting the protagonist's personal journey against the larger backdrop of the trajectory of rising Asia. Lives full of chance and tragedy, choice and circumstance, buffeted by the tides of greater socio-economic forces at work around them.

The best works of art find their way into your heart and expand it. This one has done that for me. Very highly recommended.

The most striking thing about this book is its structure. Modeled as a self-help book, How to get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is about the journey of a young man from abject poverty to being rich, well filthy rich, in the rising economy of an unnamed country of the Indian subcontinent. Divided into twelve chapters, each representing a phase of the life of the unnamed protagonist, and each based on an advice which the self-help book author is giving (avoid idealists, befriend a bureaucrat, don't fall in love,etc.), the book is a very intelligent and well written satire on the contemporary urban life in the region.

This is probably the first novel I have read, where the entire story is told in a second person narrative mode (the self-help book author is talking to the unnamed protagonist, referring him as "you"). Further, none of the other characters have any names, they are just referred to as son, father, sister, pretty girl, wife etc. This unusual structure and writing style is the highlight of the book and makes it a must read for those interested in new and ingenious ways of constructing a narrative.

On the flip side, what this novel really lacked was a well-formed plot. The story moves really fast, often skipping decades between chapters. Not enough time is spent on developing the characters and I was never able to emotionally connect with the two main ones - the protagonist and the pretty girl. I neither felt the pains of their struggles, nor the joys of their success. This left me slightly disappointed.

PS: I received a complimentary copy of this book, in order to review it.

This is a compelling novel, original in concept and entertaining in its vision of the human condition. It is told in a radically unusual voice. I have encountered this before in short stories but never previously for 228 pages of finely crafted narrative. The telling is neither first person nor third, but a ‘you’ form that held me intimately spellbound.
The theme is familiar – from powerless poverty to fabulous wealth. The hero and heroine could be any of us hungry for a better life, just as the jacket blurb promises.
The book’s structure follows the suggestion of its title, with chapters divided into advice -- such as Move To The City, Get An Education, Don’t Fall In Love -- , and so on. Each relates an episode towards the ultimate goal and its pitfalls.

Whilst the themes and story arc are familiar, the way Hamid handles it and weaves the narrative around colorful yet unsentimental everyday descriptions of poverty, politics, corruption, bribes and violence is brilliant. I particularly enjoyed the way he captures the details of the vibrant yet gritty urban sprawl with fly-by dental clinics, phone top-up stands, and corrugated iron scrap yards that spring up alongside high tech offices.

His characters were delightful too, from the long-bearded religious fundamentalist we encounter at university to the teacher who yearns to become an electricity meter reader.

I also loved the use of the second person, and whilst I thought the self-help chapter headings were a little gimmicky at first, I ended up quite enjoying the rhythm they provided as it ensured the story flowed on at a nice clip. If anything, I would have enjoyed a few more as there were several decades that he skipped by rather quickly, or omitted entirely, that I would have enjoyed learning more about.

All in all a highly enjoyable read that also introduced me to Moshan Hamid, an incredibly talented writer. I'm definitely gonna pick up some of his other work

This is the first book I have read by Mohsin Hamid but I can understand the clamor and adoration of his novel approach (a pun to be sure). Presented from second person point of view, I was comfortable with this technique by the second chapter. Our hero, who is nameless, is introduced to us in the first chapter. He is a village child, in Move to the City Chapter, who, although ill with hepatitis, tells us how the family moved to a city in South Asia, I presume. He is smart and his teacher, who resents being a teacher, physically punishes him for correcting a wrong answer. This sets the tone for the corrupt and teeming employment system. Our hero is not going to play this game entirely and motivated by his father's insistence, he Gets an Education in Chapter 2. He become street wise and is probably the smartest kid in the class.

During this transition he falls in love with the "pretty girl" who remains elusive. She, too, is drenched in poverty and uses any talent to pull herself up However, Chapter 3 emphasizes Don't Fall in Love which he really cannot follow. The Chapters are cleverly titled and move us through time and place as our hero becomes a corporate tycoon earning his wealth from water, of all things. Boiled, tap water to be specific. The Chapters are presented as a self-help book, which the reader will either find gimmicky or clever and informative.

Hamid gives us details when I thought I was reading generalities. One of the most viable parts of his story is the sickness and death of his mother. She is a sharp-tongued woman who is tough but we can visualize her loss of strength when she is diagnosed with advanced stage thyroid cancer. The class system rears its ugly head. The narrator's father begs his rich employer to help his wife and she relents to financially pay for surgery in a private hospital. When the patient needs post-operative care, the rich woman is finished with her generosity, after all, she wonders, when will it stop? This is a sad commentary and I believe it fueled our hero to Learn From a Master in Chapter 5.

Success does not eradicate loneliness and an Exit Strategy is needed. Despite love and family devotion, our hero seems to ingest the crucial despots of business in Pakistan. When an author provides the reader with almost a straight-up success story, coming down is tough. Highly recommended.

I'm admittedly an Indophile-I love books dealing with everything with the subcontinent. I tried the case the of exploding mangoes and I gave up on Pakistani writers. I saw this book at my local library-I've seen and ignored the Reluctant Fundamentalist-and I decided to give 'these guys' another try. Thank God I'm so gullible (or bored). This is probably the best book I've read in ages. Hamid writes powerfully-on more than one occasion, I've had to turn back to the cover to reread the Author's, decidedly Muslim name. Mohsin Hamid.No, not Hemmingway or JD Salinger or the likes. He's able to distill the essence of Asia (predominantly Pakistan, but could easily have been any part of the Indian subcontinent)and let it fill your veins. On more than one occasion, I've kept the book down, overwhelmed, swept into the strong currents of culture and country he brings back. What more can I say about this book, a book that I have been carefully rationing and unfortunately, or fortunately on this scotch soaked evening, I have finished. a beautiful tribute to a land and culture, born so different from what it is now.
I look forward to this brilliant writer's next book and I wish I could take him out for a dinner and scotch.
a wonderful book.
10 stars out of 5.

Covering one man's life, from sickly childhood through his 80s, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a unique novel which follows the career highs and lows of him and his love as they progress through life in an un-named Asian country. Their path mirrors the explosive growth and requisite growing pains for their homeland, and in so doing, shines a light deep into the ugly recesses of Asia's explosive growth. It is funny, observant, and at times, heartbreaking too.

Set up as a self-help book with the convenient explanation that all books are self-help books (true), each of the 20-or-so page sections describes how to "get rich" and the steps one has to take to do so. It reads quickly, yet provides a gratifying substance via brilliant writing and philosophical observations by the author. This novel is a fascinating read as well as a joyous and illuminating one. Recommended.

I was eagerly looking forward to Mohsin Ahmad's How to get filthy rich in Asia. I enjoyed his Reluctant Fundamentalist, attending the releases of both books in New Delhi, where I live. At both these events, Hamid's brilliance and compassion shone. I also saw the film based on The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

I started the book I was so eagerly waiting to read with some trepidation. I like self help books, but I am also wary of them. I wondered if Hamid was using the genre as a ploy to get readers interested in the book. As I got into the book, in between the wedding of my niece, I began to get into it. There were shades of Slum Dog Millionaire and Katherine Boos book on the Mumbai settlements. And it was real to life.

Its a book for those who don't know too much about Asia and how life works in a region where the rich, poor and those in between live side by side and yet don't. The aspirations of the poor, their struggle to get to the top and what they gain and lose in the process and the dehumanisation of bodies and souls as they may their way through life.

The book is a good read.

After greatly enjoying Mohsin Hamid's previous book, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, I wondered if his next novel could possibly be as good. While opinions vary, I am strongly in the camp of those who think Hamid's latest novel is masterful. I was extremely impressed by his integration of a global perspective with a personal one, and an intellectual perspective with an emotional one. He has tremendous wisdom for someone so young, and his writing is so good that I wanted to read the book slowly and carefully and thoughtfully to fully appreciate the language, while at the same time being eager to continue to the next chapter to see how the very interesting story progressed. I would give this book six stars if I could.

An incredibly well-written story, following a young man's ascent from lowly, rural beginnings, to city life, and his slow but steady climb to wealth.
Hamid writes, unusually, in the second person (a style he also employed to great effect in 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist'), addressing the man in question in the guise of a self-help manual. The titles of the chapters, each a useful hint - 'Don't fall in Love' etc- are reflections of events in the life of our nameless 'hero'. As he ages in an increasingly corrupt and polluted city, there are moments described in a sharp and witty manner, but parts are also very moving.
Very enjoyable.

As has been said by so many, this is not a self-help book. Neither is it simply about climbing the financial ladder. It is the story of a young boy who is born poor and gradually becomes wealthy, falling in love in the process, and ultimately growing old.
What I liked about it: the confidence exuded by the author; his unique style of writing in the second person,(though a bit repetitious in view of his other two novels, and distracting at times); his ability to carry a story without naming a single character, and without direct reference to the place or time; the representation of aging and dying; the portrayal of the cruel demarcation between the rich and poor.
What I disliked: the self-help format created for me a barrier between the characters and myself. I did not feel much empathy for them(with the exception of the last few pages).The language was unnecessarily crude in places, and considering this was ultimately a love story, it fell short of achieving its purpose. In fact, at times it seemed almost like an unromantic version of Love in the Time of Cholera.
Mohsin Hamid is a talented writer with a unique style and interesting repertoire of metaphors, but ultimately this was not my kind of novel.

I read this book immediately after soldiering through a well-structured and ambitious but lengthy novel by a writer who just can't write well. Her book had multiple interwoven plots, thematic images that repeated themselves, and a Point of View. Ugh. I was thrilled when the machinery finally stopped creaking and the book was done. Tellingly, after my book group discussed that book and brought out everything the author was trying to do, I liked the book better. But then I went back and re-read a few pages and remembered what a drag it was to actually read. Paragraph by paragraph the author could not write despite the interesting structure and the resonant themes and all that. It made me want to go read Middlemarch again, with Persuasion as a chaser.

Mohsiin Hamid's book is far better in every way. He is formally inventive, managing to stuff a rise-and-fall story into the form of self-help book AND narrates the book in the second person. The "I" who tells the story addresses the protagonist as "you" all the way through. This device is getting more popular, but Mohsin uses it brilliantly; the self-help book shell makes it work.

Hamid, simply put, can write. The reader (or this reader at any rate) is pulled into the novel, which as a bonus is a swift 250 or so pages long. That's plenty of space to tell a good story.

The book tells the story of a not very likable man who rises from his tiny backward village to the stratosphere of success in India, longs for an artistically successful actress who was his childhood friend, and is brought down from the pinnacle of success. Along the way Hamsin satirizes the Asian economic miracle and the corruption that accompanies it. All of it rings true. The formal ingenuity helps rather than hinders the story telling and the imagery.

So: an excellent novel that makes its points while telling a compelling story in a structurally interesting way. And no pesky magic realism.

There are many compelling lines to underline here, but the extraordinary strength of,this book is its arc from childhood in rural India to the intense city India has become. The protagonist's story moves organically with The rising Asia of which the title speaks. He is nameless, as are other characters, the more to make us all just people. I'd said I never wanted to read another novel in the second,person, but it worked for me here, perhaps because,of the author's warm regard for his characters. I highly recommend this to readers interested in literary technique, in an author who can step forward without breaking the illusion of a continuous dream. Also to those interested in the human condition.

A very good book with so much story in such a short space. This is a very interesting writer. He's a minimalist writer. I loved his Reluctant Fundamentalist. This book is very different from that but it's also carefully written to get the maximum effect with nothing superfluous. For example, here's the way he tells the reader that time has passed: she looks much the same but her voice has become richer in the 10 years since you last spoke with her.
This is how in this short novel, we get an entire life of one man. It is crisp satire but melancholy rather than comedic.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is the bittersweet story of a young man growing up in an unnamed Asian country and his quest for wealth from extreme poverty. This fictional memoir is written in second-person, in the style of a self-help book. It's prose is distant but warm, and sparse but beautiful. I never thought I would read such a poetic description of a pharmacy ("... a crowded micro-warehouse stacked with pallets not much bigger than matchboxes ...").

This book was very compelling, and I often had a hard time putting it down, not only because of its tight prose but also because of the glance it gave me into a rather unknown world.

A quick, compelling read. It IS generally structured as a 'self-help' book, but only for the first page-or-so of each chapter -- so don't let that aspect stop you from giving this book a shot. The narrator's voice is so chillingly unemotional and matter-of-fact that it evokes a completely unexpected response to the story as a whole, and life in general. There is no bias, no particular perspective, no subtle "this is right, that was wrong" type of judgment that most other books come imbued with from the author/narrator's tone.

The result is a raw, unfiltered, utterly-believable story about how a young boy in a developing country navigates the waters of business, family, love, and life. This is not my typical genre of interest, but it was an amazing and disquieting read. I'd recommend it to anyone with an open mind and a few hours to kill.

I'm racking my brain as to why I was so fascinated by this book,I heared about it from Tim Ferris and quickly got into it, I'm not much of a fiction reader but I kept coming back to this book and now I realize why. It's very familiar, I grew up in a third world country so the plight of the character is familiar- what I loved best was the incredible ability of the author to describe a scene with such intricate detail that I could see it so clearly! I loved the use of words and humor and how the story weaves together

Having read several of the previous reviews, I am not sure how much I have to offer except, perhaps, a gentle reminder. While I agree that the "you" narrator can get a bit clever, its use does track with the idea that this book purportedly belongs to the "self-help" genre. As such, a personal connection with the narrator seems superfluous, so part of the author's skill is that despite that fact, some connection is made. The depressing overall sense of the rising (and corrupt) prosperity of rising Asia at least rings true to this reader, who has never been to Asia. What strikes me as most interesting, however, that in some ways the same "self-help" advice book could have been written some century or century and a half ago in this country, the good old USA! How "progress" is accomplished on the backs of others, with little regard for moral or ethical niceties, with total disregard to the greater good, including social, economic, and ecological, is a sad commentary not only on rising Asia, but on so-called progress in general! The book reflects more than we like not on the universally ugly side of ambition and greed.

This funny, quick, insightful book is really a life study of a Pakistani boy who moves from a remote village to the big city. I not only enjoyed the description of the unnamed megalopolis and how people live, interact and breathe in such a place but also the life lessons underneath the irony and sarcasm. The exposition of south Asian culture was an eye opener. This book made me think about what's important in the big picture and at the same time was a light and enjoyable read.

Mohsin Hamid riffs on the structure of a self-help book in his short novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. Hamid packs a wallop in this clever and quirky novel. He presents the rags to riches story of someone who pursues success. Along the way, his unhappiness grows. Hamid explores ambition, dreams, the search for meaning and for love in life, as well as financial rewards. Read a sample before jumping in. Those readers who like an excerpt are likely to enjoy the whole book.

Rating: Four-star (I like it)

I didn't want this book to end unless there was some promise of more to come from this author. The book, although set in what appears to be Pakistan, applies to all of us who yearn for something better than what we currently have. And, when we achieve it, it's not as good as what we thought and has its own problems and disappointments.

The author takes us on the journey of a young man, growing up in a rural area, who wants something better for himself and how he achieves his goals, sometimes by what he knows to be morally wrong and how these experiences affect him.

The author's use of language is wonderful and I only hope that the title does not preclude other readers from picking up this book. Highly, highly recommended!

I don't write reviews often, but I thought this book was stellar. So unusually written. Moving. I was riveted. And got chills on the last page. Beautifully done, this book has now become one of my favorite books. I cannot wait to read more by this rather genius writer.

As evidenced by the title, Hamid writes a humorous and relevant tale that is timely, clever, and slyly funny. Simple but endearing characters populate his impressive style of terse details. The faux-categorization of self-help provides a unique opportunity for insight into humanity, poverty, South Asia, and modernity in a natural and clear way. The ending is exceptionally well-written and begs repeat readings, which would not be difficult to spare after such an entertaining and abbreviated novel.

Smart, compassionate and respectful. "How to..." is something completely original. Set in an unnamed Asian country, this is the life saga--warts and all--of two characters born in rural poverty but striving to climb to success (in a material sense). Their lives intersect occasionally until old age brings them together, shorn of the trappings of success but open to enjoyment of companionship and affection.

Overcoming the manifold problems of getting ahead in a third world country is the basis of the "self-help" book that "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" purports to be. In actuality, it is a kind of catalog of the obstacles that are placed in the way of basic existence for the majority of the world's population. Terrible living conditions, lack of food and safe water, threats to women's health, classicism, corruption, uncontrolled urban growth and corresponding loss of food-producing land are among the problems realistically and movingly dealt with in this story. The book's two main protagonists, "the pretty girl" and "the boy" are wonderfully described characters who count as success stories here, but nevertheless, pay a terrible price to attain the status of "winners".

The bittersweet ending is nicely done and provides an intelligent salvage of the otherwise painful story of people who know what desperate living is really about. Highly recommended and important.

Everyone has an opinion of this book, and here's mine:

I was put off by a couple of issues: The beginning of each chapter about self-help that could've been kept out, and secondly, the writing style. This is the first book I've read that I REALLY had to focus on each sentence. Miss one or two and you'd be lost for the next few paragraphs. Reading should not be such a chore, especially a work of fiction.

The lack of any character names whatsoever was fine, and Mr. Hamid pulled it off. The character development, other than the main two, was lacking. The story however, picked up steam as I persisted.

Overall, this book was just above average and worth the read.

So how DO you get filthy rich in rising Asia? Mohsin Hamid's latest book masquerades as a how-to manual for success, with chapter headings such as Move to the City, Learn from a Master, and Dance With Debt. Each chapter lasers in on a different socioeconomic level in stratified Pakistan: dirt-poor urchin, up-and-coming entrepreneur, wealthy business owner, and so on.

None of the characters have names. There is "you" (as in "You are a smart kid who grows up in a poor South Asian country, working the corrupt systems to your advantage"), determined to make a fortune in the bottled water business. And there is the "pretty girl" who is his just out of reach soulmate and shares his ambition.

"You" could be everyman in a Pakistan that is going through seismic changes. We (the readers) view a country that is greased by cozying up to the right person, bribing the right bureaucrats, and making sure you secure protection. Here in Pakistan, extreme poverty co-exists with the rise of technology, segmenting the country even further.

The overriding question is, "Does all this work?" That's a question that every reader must answer for herself or himself. For me, the conceits - the self-help framework and the second-person voice - distanced me from the characters in ways that Mr. Hamid's first two books did not.

I'll reveal my hand here: I loved Mr. Hamid's first book, Moth Smoke, a seductive and fast-paced tale of a man fired from his banking job in Lahore, whose lack of connections, combined with the allure of drugs and easy money, doom him. This page-turning book revealed an insider's look of trying to make it in Pakistan. Ditto for his better-known book, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, narrated by the complex character of Changez, a character who begins to smolder with resentment.

This time, I felt that I was mostly admiring the mastery of an excellent writer - and I do acknowledge that Mr. Hamid is very talented - without the immersion into the character's lives. I respected what this author was accomplishing without ever feeling particularly invested. Perhaps that says more about this reader than the book, but I was left wanting.

Hamid breaks the conventional novel mold with this brashly titled, self-referencing expose on self-help books written entirely in an omniscient second person narrative. Colorful and evocative language outline harsh realities of an unnamed but appealing main character, You, seeking the comforts of wealth while being tempted by the distracting call of true love.

Great book. After 10 pages I wasn't sure if I would get very tired of reading a book in the second person, but it totally works most of the time. It was a quick, fun diversion from my other reading.

A poor boy in Asia uses the vehicle of this book to share ways of getting rich amid his life story. It’s a hard story, a dark story, a sad story, but then you probably expected that. It’s also an easy story, a light story, a joyous story, and that might be more surprising. A life lived in the extremes of pleasure and pain, and that makes for a good book.

The reviews was raving , the ratings is high, the title is catching hence a promising of a good book. I picked it up to put it down because it was a let down, very disappointed. There were lots of self- deprecating humors but there were tons of cursing and sexual graphic language . Of which I don’t think the book nor the story required . Perhaps people don’t get bothered by it nowadays. Perhaps this is what people want Perhaps some writers from non-speaking English country think this is the formula for success and to get people to read a book just like Hollywood thinks sexual graphic language and violence are the selling points for their movies. Anyway, it is what it is... I just want to forewarn readers like me whom are weary of bad language that pervasive in our culture everywhere you turn.

Pakistani novelist of enormous insight and irony. His story telling pits prevailing
human narratives about Pakistan, its roots of radicalization, corruption and uneven
growth against a the story of a boy growing to manhood. Not political but a universal narrative that moves you along in a heartfelt way. This novel is a winner.

I agree with other reviewers that didn't rate this book so highly. It's an easy read, but not engaging or satisfying. At the end, I felt a sad emptiness for the protagonist and his country. It's an interesting book, but hopefully not the author's best.

Amazing book. The language is deceptively simple, spare yet poignant. I finished it in about two days. On the very last page, a single tear dropped from my eye as I closed the book (turned off my Kindle). Just perfect.

hamid is an author to cherish. he is a true writer; every word counts and satisfies. his story builds steadily. every character is necessary. it doesn't matter that the beautiful girl has no name; she is a fully developed character. it doesn't matter that the country is unnamed. it grows from mostly agricultural to mostly high tech. it has an underlying tension...youthful tribes, bribe-seeking officials. the ending is perfect.

At the start of his NOVEL, Mohsin Hamid (author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist) cautions that the only self that is helped by a self-help book is its author (who clarifies his/her thoughts by writing and editing them; royalties are a bonus). The maxims Hamid provides are generic, as are his characters (types). The book is annoyingly (cutsely) written in the second person. The reader is the "you" addressed by the opening page or so of each chapter that maintains the pretense of offering advise on how to get rich in an unnamed but clearly Muslim South Asian country. (The first step is to move to the city, the last is to have an exit strategy.)

The "you" in the rest of each chapter is a boy from the countryside whose father is a servant in an inland and increasingly sprawling city that surely is modeled on Lahore, where Hamid lives. I don't think the failure to specify when or where the romance between "you" and "pretty girl," as both rise from rural poverty to prosperity (not to "filthy rich" status IMHO) makes he story universal. What I see as fuzziness, particularly about the time that I think must be telescoped, makes the story of the never-named characters generic, like the advice that the narrative's "you" was not always able to take. "Don't fall in love" is the most momentous of failures to heed the how-to advice, though also what gives the fetchingly yearning character "you" the most interest.

His career of skirting laws, bribing the assistants of government officials, etc. is pretty generic, told with matter-of-factness that probably is realistic rather than cynically exaggerated. (Undertaking to represent the subjectivity of an airborne drone missile is that, however.)

"You" is stoic about failures, personal or other. Why not? He is represented from considerable emotional distance by an omniscient narrator, not from inside (in the first person). The narrator also writes coolly about the career of "pretty girl" (whom he still refers to that way when she is in her 80s), whose rise depended on different relationships than the quasi-tribal, religious sectarian, and self-interested men whose aid "you" needs to climb higher and higher in a society with a large and restless underclass whose resentments are manipulated but not completely predictable (controlled) by the small elite of which "you" becomes at most a marginal (and, therefore, dispensable) member.

I find the second-person narration and the self-help frame cutsey gimmicks, though Hamid writes convincingly about class and corruption in a society that is like Pakistan or IS Pakistan (with "pretty girl" succeeding in Karachi, retiring to Lahore). He definitely is a convincing analyst of urbanization, e.g., presenting "you" as an instance of a society in which "supportive, stifling, stabilizing bonds of extended relationships weakening and giving way, leaving in their wake insecurity, anxiety, productivity and potential." This is very crisp sociology and the puppet "you" lives out the potentialities and anxieties for the reader to observe.

Mohsin Hamid's task was tough: writing a novel that would measure up to the compelling and dramatic opus that helped him make his name, The Reluctant Fundamentalist. The fact that he has done this so well in this novel, which takes a similarly wry and cynical look at the daily lives of those living in the "emerging economies" of the world, is a tribute to both his skill as a writer and to his ability to take those experiences and transform them into compelling fiction. This won't appeal to all readers of "Reluctant Fundamentalist", given its very different tone and focus, but together the two books not only gave me two wonderful and distinctive reading experiences but helped me grasp the realities that lie behind the global demographic trends.

What made "Reluctant Fundamentalist" so vivid and so compelling was the voice: Hamid's main character was speaking directly to someone he has encountered in a Pakistani city, and explaining the process by which he became what he is today -- the man of the title. In contrast, the narrator of this novel is Hamid himself, or his proxy: a cynically omniscient presence, who speaks to the main character, an unnamed Pakistani toddler/boy/adolescent/young man/aging man, who defies the odds to do just what the title promises, become filthy rich (or at least, what passes for filthy rich in his world). "In the world of cooks and delivery boys and minor salesmen, the world to which you have belonged, a resident's bond is a rest stop on the incessant treadmill of life," the narrator 'instructs' his character at a key turning point in the latter's journey. "Yet you are now a man who works for himself, an entrepreneur." And sure enough, the young man takes his savings to put them to work to expand his bottled water business, setting the stage for success.

Using the format of the ubiquitous manuals for success that are so popular in much of the Indian subcontinent, China and other emerging economies, Hamid is able to comment ironically on what constitutes success (his anonymous 'hero' gets his start reselling boiled tap water as bottled water) and how all that those of us in more stable parts of the world consider vital (ethics, friendship, love, ideals) must be shunned. These luxuries will distract the determined man in pursuit of wealth, and in "rising Asia", there is no middle ground between success and failure; no just 'making do', especially if you don't have wealthy parents or connections who can bribe others on your behave to get you a sinecure in the civil service. To succeed, you have to leave the countryside for the city (as billions of "rising Asians" have done in the last half-century), embrace education and corruption, shun love, be entrepreneurial and yes, even violent, if need be.

In many ways, the main character in this novel is the other side of the coin to Hamid's reluctant fundamentalist. The latter has tried to build a new life away from his roots but has failed and found his refuge in becoming what people already feared he was. The unnamed "you" of this book hasn't tried to leave behind his world, but to make it work for him, corruption and all. Both, in different ways, find themselves destroyed by the effort. This novel, however, is spread over the decades of its subject's life: it is life via a wide-angle camera lens rather than the intensity of a telephoto image, and that creates a different kind of impact within the reader. It's harder to engage with this character, much less the 'pretty girl' with whom he falls in a kind of love in his late teenage years, and who herself is determined to make it against the odds. Their obsession with their goal pulls them apart from each other, but also made them harder for me, as the reader, to relate to -- they were oddly impersonal. But then, that's just what Hamid intended to do.

This brilliant novel loses its way a little in the final pages, as the main character ages, and I couldn't help wishing for an ending just as ambiguous as that of The Reluctant Fundamentalist in place of the straightforward and rather obvious conclusion. Still, that didn't put much of a damper on my enthusiasm for Hamid's vivid prose or his sardonic tone as he takes the reader through the stages that lead to 'success' in the emerging markets today. There's a lot of talk about the rising middle class in countries like Pakistan, India, China, Indonesia and many other nations of this kind, and a raft of recent non-fiction works like Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers have dealt eloquently with those who are left behind. Increasingly, Asian novelists are dealing with these themes, and in Hamid's case, doing so with great success. Being a Pakistani novelist may not be a recipe for becoming "filthy rich", but it enriches the lives and understanding of his lucky readers.

The bottom line? Not all readers of Hamid's previous tour-de-force novel will find this as dramatic or immediate, but it's just another way to convey through fiction one of the biggest transformations of the century. Their prose styles may be far distant, but Hamid has an almost Dickensian ability to capture social trends and character. 4.5 stars, rounded up because this is too good a novel to earn only four stars.

This book is written as a how to book in the second person, but am not sure why, as I believe the story itself could have been more powerful coming from another voice. But that is clearly not what the author wanted, given the lack of details the author provided. The reader doesn't even know where the story takes place, although it is clearly in South Asia and likely in Pakistan. Almost nine decades pass in the book, with each chapter jumping to another stage of the main character's life - even though "you" act as the main character. In the end, though, I believe this book is about love and life's choices. What you decide now will determine who is with you in the end as you approach your final moments, a time when so many of life's prior decisions and events seem insubstantial and meaningless. I enjoyed this book more as I read on and found it interesting and unique by the end.

A moving evocation by an author who loves his nameless protagonist...a kind of Everyman in a volcanically changing nameless Asian megapolis. Unusual as written in the second person...you are addressed...you are there...and you come to care very very much about this life/love story.

The mock self-help device is just one of the ways this brilliant book lends insights into our modern, but timeless, dilemma. And we'd all be wiser if every self-help / get-rich-quick book in every airport in America were replaced with this one.

Taut, spare prose containing astounding emotion for the 'rising Asia' that is the author's homeland, as well as poetic understanding and deep empathy for the human condition in all its frailties and strengths. Yet, somehow,the book never manages to take off and soar, captivating the reader with the intersected fates of its characters, nor does it manage to become more than a wonderful and concise depiction of human life. Yet, however lacking the transformative quality of great literature, its literary merits are undeniable.

With HGFRRA, Mohsin Hamid has outdone his previous two fictions... What marks this work is his ability to run a thread of tenderness amidst an ocean of brutality and unkindness. He is comparable in this resepct with Garcia Marquez. His intelligence, erudition and sensitivity stand out. Probably, this is a contemporary third world trait of great writers, Michael Ondatije included. Hamid is the easily the most inspiring novelist from south Asia in a decade. We'll certainly hear more of him in future...

Moshin Hamid certainly is a writer who is technically talented, yet emotionally there is a vacancy in this book that is perplexing. One can only hope that he will dig deeper and excavate authentic human emotions from his highly educated mind in the future. I adore cleverness and wit (see the master, Tom Robbins), but gimmicks fall flat for me. In this book, Hamid seems to derive more pleasure from playing with structure than creating memorable characters or emotional impact. Yawn. The thinness of the "love story", especially the generic drop-in of the "pretty girl," was so lazy it surprises me that his editors allowed it. The novel reads like a first draft with potential.

The mock self-help device is just one of the ways this brilliant book lends insights into our modern, but timeless, dilemma. And we'd all be wiser if every self-help / get-rich-quick book in every airport in America were replaced with this one.

Taut, spare prose containing astounding emotion for the 'rising Asia' that is the author's homeland, as well as poetic understanding and deep empathy for the human condition in all its frailties and strengths. Yet, somehow,the book never manages to take off and soar, captivating the reader with the intersected fates of its characters, nor does it manage to become more than a wonderful and concise depiction of human life. Yet, however lacking the transformative quality of great literature, its literary merits are undeniable.

With HGFRRA, Mohsin Hamid has outdone his previous two fictions... What marks this work is his ability to run a thread of tenderness amidst an ocean of brutality and unkindness. He is comparable in this resepct with Garcia Marquez. His intelligence, erudition and sensitivity stand out. Probably, this is a contemporary third world trait of great writers, Michael Ondatije included. Hamid is the easily the most inspiring novelist from south Asia in a decade. We'll certainly hear more of him in future...

Moshin Hamid certainly is a writer who is technically talented, yet emotionally there is a vacancy in this book that is perplexing. One can only hope that he will dig deeper and excavate authentic human emotions from his highly educated mind in the future. I adore cleverness and wit (see the master, Tom Robbins), but gimmicks fall flat for me. In this book, Hamid seems to derive more pleasure from playing with structure than creating memorable characters or emotional impact. Yawn. The thinness of the "love story", especially the generic drop-in of the "pretty girl," was so lazy it surprises me that his editors allowed it. The novel reads like a first draft with potential.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is the novel I wish I had written. It's clever, it's poetic, it's memorable and--at the risk of overstating--it has weight, importance. It's a novel that seeped into my skin as soon as I started reading it and won't leave soon.

If it sounds like a self-help book, that's because it's meant to. Told like a series of self-help tips about how to become rich in Asia, it shows the stark contrast between the characters' aspirations and their impoverished reality. Think Slumdog Millionaire meets The Kite Runner. Plus, it's told in the notoriously tricky to pull off second-person. Any writer considering writing a novel in the second person should read this book first to see how to do it well.

I may wish that I had written this book, but I have a feeling that no one could have written this but Mohsin Hamid. I don't usually like to gush this much, but I was blown away by the talent of this writer. I can't wait to read more from him. I can't believe he was able to make me care so much about characters who were never given names, in a city that is never specified. Amazing and unforgettable.

I think the last time I was this moved by the beauty of prose was after I read Erick Setiawan's Of Bees and Mist. But at the same time this was a very personal reaction to the book, so I'm almost a little worried that if I say too much, I'll be setting the expectations impossibly high for anyone who hasn't read it yet. All I can say is that I personally loved it and would highly recommend it. It's not a book that is strictly dependent on its plot, setting or even form, as much is it is on the beauty of the language and the universality of the human condition.

Okay, I've definitely set the expectations too high with that statement. Just forget what I said and read it for yourself.

Disclaimer: I received a free advanced copy of this title from the publisher, Penguin Canada, as part of the Penguin Book Club Exclusive Reads program. I was asked to write and share an honest review, though it was not required to be positive or favourable. The opinions expressed are strictly my own.

Although it is somewhat predictable at times, this is a beautifully written book that definitely put me in a self-reflective state. It is a quick read and wastes no time moving from event to event in the protagonists life.

A fast read that is somehow deep and sweeping...a glimpse into lives that like most of ours, reach for the stars with ambition and certainty and the reals wisdom is that it's all lost in the end...powerful and searing vision of Pakistan...

Mohsin Hamid has written an unusual novel that parodies business self-help books as it follows the life of a young man in an unnamed, large Asian metropolis. It is written in the 2nd person ("you") that self-help books often employ and novels rarely use. The books describes how the main character achieves a rags-to-riches climb in business and social status. Each chapter chronicles another stage in his life: a young man boiling water to bottle and sell on the street; an entrepenuer gaining status and meeting "the pretty girl;" married, successful, but not particularly happy; and finally as an elderly man who finally gets together with his life's love.

The style is slightly off-putting, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book for everyone. Book groups could find it an interesting topic of discussion.

This is a beautifully written book, and ambitious, however, partly because it is told in the second tense I found it was telling, not showing much of the story and I felt disassociated from the actions and emotions of the characters as a result. The conceit of it being a kind of self-help book I felt was totally irrelevant and ultimately I found the story dissatisfying in that I couldn't really care and the plot plodded.

I couldn't help thinking as I read this novel that is is how Kafka would have written had he decided to adopt a straight-forward to-the-point style.

A second person novel is not something that every writer can pull off but Hamid does it well.

I am a huge fan of Mohsin Hamid. Many years ago, I conducted an hour-long college seminar on "Moth Smoke" and more recently wrote a feature five-star review of "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" on the store. Naturally, I looked forward with great anticipation to his third novel.

But I should have known better: fans are often the hardest to please. Perhaps I set myself up. I was not only disappointed in "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia," I actually found the reading experience distasteful. In fact, to say I took an immediate intense dislike to the book is an understatement.

For me, this book was just too gimmicky from beginning to end. I couldn't get past the artifice of the odd second person narration. There was no way I could identify with the "you" character and being forced to do so paragraph after paragraph ad nauseum was torture. In addition, the self-help-book theme struck me as too forced and awkward.

So what was it that got under my skin the most? First, the author wrote himself into the story as the "I" character...and, as created by Hamid, this "I-character"-as-author is someone fully jaded by life, an overly clever and extremely cynical person. If I meet this "author" at a party, I'd lose him...fast! Second, I could not work up any interest in the two main characters, i.e., the "you" and "the pretty girl." Both were shallow narcissists. The author spends little time giving them emotional and psychological depth. I followed the brief outlines of their life stories with little interest because neither character was fleshed out in three dimensions.

To sum it up: I don't want my literature to be gimmicky...even if the writer is masterful and the writing is, at times, superb and transcendent.

I'm giving the novel three stars rather than two because there were parts that I enjoyed very much...and one chapter that blew me away (the chapter described from the viewpoint of an airborne drone). Hamid is a very accomplished writer; for me, that was the book's sole redemption. But his good writing wasn't enough to make up for the overall bad feeling of being in the middle of something too contrived for its own good.

I really wanted to love this one. Huge fan of Moth Smoke, its one of the best books I've read in forever. This one is a bit off. Feels gimmicky and like its trying too hard. Good concept, just not enough substance.

I suspect that the reason I did not particularly care for this book is the simple fact that I didn't care for the way the author narrated the book, it just seemed ever so slightly strange, or odd, or something. I don't have any particular ax to grind, I was not familiar with the author, and was actually looking forward to reading it, having stumbled across a review that piqued my interest. And I have always been interested in business, finance, and investing and love a good book in those areas, both fiction and nonfiction. Without getting too much into the plot, to me the overall story came across as insubstantial, at the end I found myself thinking, what was the point? Although maybe that was the point, I'm not sure. Anyway, like I said at the beginning, the fault probably lies more with me. This strikes me as an attempt at a Serious Literary Book That Says Important Things, so it probably contains all sorts of subtle nuances that went right over my head. And I had to chuckle when I saw the comparison to The Great Gatsby in the editorial review section. After about forty years of telling myself that I should try one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books, I attempted to read The Great Gatsby, and ended up setting it aside after slogging through about two-thirds of it. I'm not saying don't read How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, I'm just saying, approach with caution. If you are expecting a straightforward rags to riches story that might be written in the style of, say, John Grisham, or James Clevall, or any number of popular writers, you are going to be disappointed. And yes, every author has their own style, but I suspect that in this case, the author's style and my expectations are mutually incompatable, unfortunately.

Love this book so so much. And love the hardcover design! Cried while reading, which doesn’t normally happen to me while reading. Movies normally get me to cry not books. This is such a beautiful, different love story that takes place in “Asia” aka most likely Pakistan. Never been there and loved discovering a story that wasn’t American about a love that took place in a country I’ll probably never visit.

"You, a poor village boy, want above all else to achieve fantastic wealth. Here, in twelve steps, is how to do so. Just please try not to lose your heart to that pretty girl along the way."

I became interested in this book after hearing an interview with the author on "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross. Sometimes, I listen to these interviews and conclude, well, who needs to read the book; I learned all I want to know.

With this interview, I was left with the desire to hear more from Mohsin Hamid, born in Lahore in 1971, educated at Princeton and Harvard, and who has lived in California and New York City but has returned to his home, Pakistan. Plus, I was curious as to how he would pull off the exceeding tricky use of second-person. Upon seeing a photo of Hamid at his website (where you can read his essays from over the years), I found appealing the certain intelligence and depth of compassion I saw in his eyes.

I found this book an absorbing, if discomfiting, read. As well it should be when reading about abject poverty and the driven ingenuity in attempting to overcome it.