The Reluctant Fundamentalist

This short novel contains a story within a story. The frame story is a dinner conversation in Lahore between a Princeton-educated Pakistani and an American visitor to the city, as the result of what appears to be, as least ostensibly, a chance encounter. Within that story, forming the core of the novel and of the dinner conversation, is the account by Changez, the Pakistani, of his glory days as a top student at an elite American university, his work as a star rookie at a Manhattan valuation, and his love affair with the enigmatic Erica.

It is not only 9/11 that changes things for Changez, ultimately pulling him back to his homeland and away from the American dreamlike life on which he had embarked. Racism on both larger and smaller scales, acceptance that is conditional, small ostracisms and exclusions, the odd offhand comment—many jolts of this kind finally lead Changez to embrace an ideology that questions much of what he implicitly embraced, or at least tolerated, and lead him away from adopted country and back to tribe, even as he comes to believe that it is also essentially a tribal mentality—whether the tribe is religious, national, or socioeconomic—that functions in those who make him feel that he will be tolerated at best but never fully accepted. In Hamid’s treatment, this tribal mentality was exacerbated after 9/11, both for Americans and for those who found themselves on the receiving end of American anger for the depredations of that day. The novel suggests some reasons why many people with roots in the Middle East and South Asia may have felt unwelcome in the United States after 9/11, even if they had made it their adopted home. Each group’s wariness of other groups found ample room for expression and seeming validation.

Some elements in the novel work better than others. The whole subplot involving Erica seemed contrived to me. Most effective is the way the tension between the outer story (the dinner) and the story within the story (the life of Changez and his choice of “fundamentalist” loyalties) builds as the mystery surrounding the purpose and possible outcome of the dinner deepens. Hamid very skillfully ratchets up this tension, until most readers will probably begin to question everything they assumed about the intentions of Changez, the nature of the American, and the purpose of the dinner. I don’t think it’s giving anything away to say that the ending leaves one to resolve the ambiguity mostly through one’s own assumptions. The interview with the author at the end of the book suggests that this was his intention. Sometime late in the novel you may find yourself thinking, “Hey, wait a minute. Is it possible that . . . ?” And then by the end, you may well conclude, “Well, yeah, I can see that . . .” In the end, though, you may just throw up your hands and wonder, “Sure, but on the other hand . . .” Mohsin Hamid leaves all of those doors open. In that sense there is no payoff, except your reexamination of your own thoughts. That’s not such a bad thing.

Self Centered

I understand that this book was considered for a major writing award. How sad that one would consider this poorly written story of a child of privilege who comes to America and state department our finest schools, falls in love and then makes a personal choice to reject the goodness of the US in exchange for stereotypical paranoia about our goals and ideals .The insult is compounded by his total lack of understanding of mental illness, and how to relate to one in crises .Self centered, egotistical, and immature all describe this character. A total waste of valuable reading time.

A brilliant novel: compelling reading, in limpid and straightforward prose.

In a café in his native city of Lahore, some time after 9/11, a bearded 25-year-old Pakistani called Changez engages an American in talk, though we only read his side of the conversation, so it is in effect a monologue. We gather from it how the American responds. He seems nervous, probably regarding Changez as a dangerous Muslim fanatic. Changez tells him of his life.

He had had a scholarship to Princeton University, had graduated with distinction and had then been one of the select few who had been chosen to work for Underwood Samson, a prestigious consultancy in New York, which specialized in turning businesses around, usually by sacking many of their employees. Its operatives are constantly told of the need to focus on the economic FUNDAMENTALS in the concerns it takes on. He came top in the exacting training programme at Underwood Samson; and his employers value him greatly.

Changez seemed to be well-integrated in America, seemed in love with it, as he was with an American girl called Erica. (The the store reviewer “Pipistrel” has intriguing suggestions about the symbolism of the names Changez and Erica.)

He sees quite a lot of her, and she clearly feels affection for him; but he is aware that she has never stopped grieving a Chris, a boy friend who had died of lung cancer the year before he met her. He feels the dead Chris as a rival; and he behaves towards Erica was exquisite tact and never makes any erotic advances. In the end it will be she who will invite him, but their encounters are problematical. She is quite disturbed. There are many days when she does not answer his phone-calls and when he does not see her. At one time he visits her in a clinic where she had sought isolation. He never sees her again: she disappeared from the clinic and would appear to have drowned herself.

While Changez is in Manila on business, the attack on the Twin Towers in New York happens; and he confesses that the symbolism of America being brought to her knees appealed to him, though of course he concealed that from his colleagues. But immediately his life changed. He was searched at the airport before he boarded the plane back to New York, and he was again held back for a while when he arrived there. He is shocked by the American attack on Afghanistan, and alarmed by the threat of war with India. To affirm his identity, he grew a beard, and that made his colleagues uneasy. For his part, what with his disillusionment with America’s policies in Asia and unhappy about Erica’s wish to be left alone, he loses the concentration on his work with Underwood Samson, which had sent him to Chile to assess a struggling publishing firm. He was suddenly aware of the impact his work would have on the people in the publishing firm. A striking comment made by the owner of the firm, comparing Changez with a slave janissary in the service of the Ottomans (Americans) settles it: he is suddenly aware of American intervention all over the world, not only militarily, but also, through institutions like Underwood Samson, financially. He abruptly leaves Chile, and of course he lost his job in New York.

He returned to Lahore. He became a university lecturer, and stimulated his students to demonstrate – peacefully - for the real independence of Pakistan. He gave a powerful television interview in which he bitterly attacked American politics: it went viral. He was warned that the Americans might seek him out for retaliation. Was his American interlocutor in the café, who clearly packed a gun under his clothes, an agent sent to do the job? Or was he armed because he feared that someone like Changez might target him? The book ends with these questions.

this story should be read, if possible, in a single sitting, to appreciate the device mohsin hamid employed in telling it. a man in lahore, pakistan, who introduces himself as chancez, approaches a stranger from the usa in a market plaza who appears to be looking for something, and begins a conversation. the conversation swiftly becomes a monologue of chancez’s stint in the usa as a princeton student and an employee in a prestigious valuing firm. the narrative is told in the first person, present tense, through the voice of chancez. chancez provides descriptions of the square as night falls and shares comments as repeated remarks, attributed to the man from the usa of whom nothing is revealed.

the story told directly to the second person, the anonymous ‘you’, gives the impression chancez is talking directly to the reader. related in an orderly prose, chancez catches the reader’s attention, whereas nothing, other than what little movements chancez observes in his companion, reveals if the american is paying attention. tension builds as the reader wonders who either man is and what really brought them together in a café in pakistan.

chancez was the ideal successful immigrant until 9-11 changed perceptions and his presence was a magnet for emotions.

a shift in his story introduces the young woman from a wealthy family he met as a student at his ivy league school, and their friendship.

meaning, allegiance, and the price of holding on to the american dream once achieved by someone from another country, is questioned.

the story is a good one, whether it would stand alone not framed by the tension within the setting of the two men at a table in pakistan is a matter of reading taste. that moshin hamid framed the story the way he did makes for a good timely literary suspense that doesn’t let down from the suggestive title to the chilling ending.

THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST is Mohsin Hamid's fictional tale of Changez, a bright young Pakistani man, a 2001 graduate of Princeton who snags a prestigious job in high finance and falls in love with a wealthy young American woman, and what happens to him after 9/11. It is a very disturbing read, as it is meant to be, because it takes you inside the mind of this highly intelligent and ambitious young man, and you are privy to his gradual changes in attitude toward America and all that he had ever worked toward in his young life.

It's a quick read at less than 200 pages, but even in that brief span, the conceit of young (22) Changez telling his whole story to an American stranger he meets in a Lahore bazaar begins to wear thin. Changez's voice is the only one throughout the book. That method of narrative became rather irritating about halfway through the book. I wished that Hamid had told his tale in a more conventional manner. But maybe that's just me, because the book is effective, to a certain extent, in giving a typical American an inside look at what it would be like to be a young Middle Eastern-looking man, with a beard, living in NYC in the months following the 9/11 attack. And the reader sees, understands, how it radically changes the arc of his life and aspirations.

A very different sort of book. Worth the read. I will recommend it to anyone who wants a glimpse into the psyche of 'the other side' and how one might become radicalized. The book offers a very frightening and feasible explanation on why this may indeed be, as author Dexter Filkins calls it, THE FOREVER WAR.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

I found it flat and uninspired. And I absolutely hated the monologue/conversation style. It was more of a distraction than anything. To be honest, some of the reviews I've read here were more interesting than the book was.

This is a short novel, simple in form, a life story told by a youngish man to an older man who is likely a CIA agent. The young man has become disillusioned by the United States, to which he had emigrated, notwithstanding that he was eminently successful in that society. While the prose is simple, there are many passages that stand out for how well they express a thought. His lover was socially active, but often withdrew into herself, like “a child who could sleep only with the door open and the light on”. When she finally sends the novella she has long been working on to a publisher, “It’s like an oyster. I’ve had this sharp speck inside me for a long time, and I’ve been trying to make it more comfortable, so slowly I’ve turned it into a pearl. But now it’s finally been taken out, and just as it’s going I’ve realized there’s a gap being left behind …..”.

The politics of the novel totally confounds me, suggesting that because of 9/11 Pakistani’s were very fearful of an Indian invasion. My understanding is that it was the Pakistani military that wanted to stoke tensions with India to abet its own influence. The United States has been giving military assistance for many years to Pakistan, not India, and after 9/11 the United States was unwilling to directly confront Pakistani covert support for the Taliban. In very recent years, the political situation has been changing somewhat.

This is a love story of two very different people caught up in a fast changing, dangerous world. A Princeton-educated Pakistani young man finds himself in a great finance job with lots of perks. He falls in love with a beautiful New Yorker who is trying to become a writer. But she is also emotionally damaged and difficult to read. In the middle of this story, 9-11 occurs and things begin to change.
Author Mossin Hamid has written a beautiful story. It draws you in, its a quick read, and the prose is elegant and straightforward. The point-of-view is of a foreign student/graduate and the observations of America and Americans should give one pause. He writes the story as the young man is conversing with a foreigner at a street cafe in Lahore, Pakistan. Its a great vehicle for telling this kind of look-back story and it works extremely well. I will be reading more of Mohsin Hamid's writing and I recommend you do too.

Generally, I liked this book, but it was perhaps a little superficial and lacked depth in some places. I wanted to understand aspects behind certain motivations, which may have been just me. It was as though I was expected to accept that something is simply so; One day he is on Wall Street, the next moment a radical anti-Western leader.
Given the subject of the novel, the motivation and reason is primary, at least to me as a reader. The gravity of the topic needed more development to satisfy my curiosity.
I quite like the metaphor behind the names he used such as: Erica (America) and the protagonist Changez (change) even if it might seem a little simplistic. For me it was OK. Although it would have worked just as well without.
The style of narrative, a monologue at a busy cafe in Lahore was interesting. The comments of the other person in the cafe are implied through just the protagonist's monologue, also interesting. The language was smooth with commendable prose and there was just enough tension.
Hamid's writing style does indeed grab the reader's attention and I commend him for that. However, this novel could have been brilliant instead of just good.
If there were a setting for three and a half stars I would choose it. But there isn't so I will go to 4 because he is so obviously a skilled writer.
As I already said, generally, I liked the novel, but I didn't LOVE it.
I will definitely try another one of his books soon, though.
Sergiu Pobereznic (author)

This book is very illogical and I am so disappointed in the individuals that gave the book good reviews. Something tells me that ISI (the friendly Pakistani chaps who gave the world the Taliban) thinks this is a perfect read for future western agents, acolytes and useful idiots.

I will not discuss the so called plot or stories for they are mere background for the author's grievance against the US.

Now, why did I give the book two stars? Because the phrases flow nicely, despite the awkward pakistani wanna-be english. Reading this book is a test. Are you smart/literate/ aware of history enough to resist its sneaky premise. It is the al-takkia for the infidel, seduction by deceiving and then the ambush follows.

The first 70 or so pages go without incident until the author tells us via the Changez character that he was "remarkably pleased" for 9/11. Are you kidding me?????? I am from Europe and was in Canada at the time and I was depressed for a month for 9/11 despite being 800 kilometers away. And this guy was "remarkably pleased" and smiled? After this, reading the rest of the book was a pain for me.

He blames India for some random terrorists attack (according to him) against the Indian Parliament. We know it's all posturing, and in my opinion, Pakistan government (or ISI, hard to say who leads and who follows) is fully aware that there can not be all-out war between India and Pakistan, given their insane nuclear arsenal. So when India raises its head, opens up and develops ahead of its backward, theocratic, stone age neighbor, the ISI sends over its agents to kill civilians in India. In authors' view, India is a bully for defending itself against this death cult who tries to envelop its neighbor; and US is also guilty by ignoring years of cooperation with Pakistan to side with this "bully" (India). But for those who want a true sample of Pakistan (or ISI) perfidy, I suggest Steven Coll - Ghost war, despite its length (not to mention the hosting of OBL and abetting the Taliban).

On page 156 (I have the Canadian edition) he criticizes the US for its foreign interventions. In my opinion, the US has been the most benign super power ever. Now compare for example US's treatment Germany and Japan (both losers in WW II) with the sad communist countries of the Eastern Block, Cuba or North Korea (under USSR); or better yet with Afghanistan, a sad unlucky country brought to its knees by the ISI's hound dogs.

So how does the "reluctant" fundamentalist try to get back at the US? (It's worth mentioning here that the main protagonist drinks to his heart content). His aim is to disengage Pakistan from the US. The US is in Pakistan to fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan. But as I mentioned before, the Taliban has been armed and supported by ISI from the the beginning, so in a sense, the war in Afghanistan is a proxy war between civilians in Afghanistan with US help and ISI and its stone age brutes. (Something tells me we will witness insane atrocities by the Taliban once US pulls out.) Our protagonist becomes a lecturer in Pakistan, who inflames his foolish pupils and pushes them towards violence. He teaches finance, because this is the way by which US forces other countries (Pakistan included) into submission.

He says that he is against violence, but then he doesn't much mind when his storm troopers engage in it.

I have to stop here, I feel like throwing up...

LOVED. I found this book for like $2 at Half Price Bookstore and decided to purchase it. WAY underpriced for a novel so clearly-written. It was SUCH a fast read... not something I would've expected from a book on such a different culture / ideas (one might expect it to be overly-obscure or "deep"). What's interesting is that it IS deep and holds intense amounts of underlying meanings, etc but it's almost like you don't "realize" that you're learning and becoming aware of intercultural differences, perhaps injustices, ironies, or simple reflections. He writes, as I said, with such small ironies here and there I would often find myself smirking, laughing, agreeing, and/or at least learning more about his culture -- which in and of itself was refreshing and interesting. His insights, perspectives, and reflections are so interesting and - if nothing else - healthy for us to hear. It humanizes the author and his country as we learn about him, his successes, and get inside his brain. It also allows us to reflect on many of our behaviors as Americans -- not to say right or wrong, simply an interesting walk in another's shoes, and through their eyes.

Despite all of that, it's just a good read. And not too short to at least check it out and read something new, whether you agree with my review or not :)

I was disappointed by this book. I agree with a reviewer I read somewhere who said the pacing of this novel feels like a rushed MFA novel thesis; Hamid builds the exposition and background of this story at quite a leisurely pace only to quite awkwardly and sloppily rush its ending to the point of absurdity.

There is one thing I loved about this book and three which caused its failure.

Let's start positive---the psychological ground explored here is deeply interesting to me. We're often beguiled by the "banality of evil" and wonder how seemingly decent people can commit indecent acts. So that curiosity kept me turning the pages.

Hamid's manner of writing was off putting on two levels. One, as this book takes the form of a monologue, Hamid attempts to work in the dialogue from the narrator's dinner partner so awkwardly it's often downright laughable. Granted, the form Hamid chose is a difficult one into which another character can express himself, but Hamid relies on an increasingly irritating and lazy trick of having the narrator REPEAT everything his dinner guest supposedly says so that we can "hear" it. This leads to sophomoric dialogue writing along the lines of "Oh, you say you wonder if it was difficult for me to continue to ignore my homeland? and "Ah, I too am wondering what those suspicious men are looking at" and "Ah yes, go ahead, type out a response to that phone call on your peculiar looking mobile phone." This gets incredibly tiresome.

The writing also suffers from robotic formality. It's clear that Hamid is working his way up to the "surprise" ending throughout because he does so with such a heavy hand.

Finally, I simply don't buy the psychological transformation Hamid is selling. Perhaps it's due to the uneven pacing, but the speaker goes from Princeton graduate/Manhattan financier to Anti-American activist in so little time and in far too easy a trite a manner. It's simply unbelievable that the character Hamid spends the first 85% of the book developing would end up doing what he does in the last 15%.

The Reulctant Fundamentalist begins well. The author describes quite accurately the life of someone who has richer grandfathers than fathers and yet richer great grandfathers. He touches that part of my country's society (India, not different from Pak) very well where we spend just to affirm to a status and look angrily at new entrepreneurs driving their BMW Suv's through the streets of Pakistan (And India)

BUT

He is not able to maintain his prose. I felt the author let me down in the second half as he got consumed by the vapid nature of his own thoughts and the book ends very abruptly. Writing should not be so apologetic and colonial. It should be a fresh rejoinder, reminder of what and why.

AND

While he does manage to convey his emotions, I thought of Changez as someone who made a mountain of a mole, whether its describing his love affair or his love for New York, sometimes I found him apologetic. The first 1/3rd of this book is really his strength.

I couldn't stand the monologue where he had a meal with you, the American. Bleh.

As a general rule, I think it's a good idea, every now and then, to view the world from unfamiliar perspectives. That's what I like about The Reluctant Fundamentalist: the opportunity to view American culture in general, and the aftermath of 9/11 particularly, through the eyes of a Pakistani living in the U.S.

The book takes place at a cafe in Lahore. Changez, a young Pakistani, sits down with an American, whom Changez suspects is miltary or an intelligence agent, and tells his story. Changez grew up in Pakistan, but gets an opportunity to attend Princeton and lands a job at an exclusive Wall Street valuation firm. He lives the American dream, finding success in a high-paying field, meeting a terrific American girl, on track for long-term success and wealth.

But everything is shattered on 9/11. Although he had done well in the U.S., and had no real reason for animosity toward Americans, he felt a sense of elation and gloating when he saw the towers fall. He got a sense of satisfaction that someone more like himself and his countrymen could strike such a blow to the world power. In the aftermath, he feels like people perceive him differently, viewing him with suspicion.

If I place myself in Changez's shoes, pretending, for instance, that I have gone to Germany to study and work, then Americans attack Germany in a terrorist attack, and Germany retailiates, I can appreciate his mixed feelings. When the U.S. attacks Afghanistan, Changez takes it personally. Even if the U.S was wronged, were we always in the right in our responses? Viewing history since 9/11 through the eyes of a Pakistani hasn't turned me against the U.S., but it certainly does make me stop and think, and consider the world from another perspective.

"Ah, you are interested in browsing a review?

I notice your hand quivers over the mouse. It suggests some inclination to click away. Come, let me describe things endlessly because I am a monologue. Look at this tea! It is warm and in a cup, is it not? Please do not be alarmed by my apparent intention to humanise a fundamentalist, for I will use such dated and condescending language as to make myself appear so smug and superior as to render the point, my friend, moot.

But I will talk forever, like those butterflies you have just observed flirting with the semi-naked girls in the half-dark dusty musky exotic misogynistic streets. Ah, let me just say "ah" when my plot seems stuck and I can't even clumsily work in a response from you, my silent audience (hey, that's you, you western jerk). But look, because my narrative structure is so poor, here is our waiter with more tea."

Blah, blah, blah. An entirely bad monologue apparently probing what any semi-intelligent person would have already considered.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is set in Lahore, Pakistan. The narrator, Changez, begins by approaching an American man in a café in the district of Old Anarkali.

The American is a stranger, but Changez offers to be of assistance to him. He begins a conversation, telling the stranger that he studied and worked in America. Changez was recruited to a valuation firm in New York after completing his university course – beating over a hundred students of the Princeton Class of 2001 to the job. He topped the intake of five trainees and the end of the induction period. Readers come to know that Changez, the Pakistani, is an elite scholar, working in a prestigious company with an excellent salary for a 22 year old. In a competitive business, the quiet Changez does extremely well. He is good at his job.

He falls in love with an American girl, Erica, whom he met when he was on holiday in Greece. He even meets her family who live in “an impressive building with a blue canopy and an elderly doorman.” Erica’s boyfriend, Chris, had died of lung cancer, and she found it hard to get over the grief of the love of her life. Changez tells the stranger about her and her love for Chris: “theirs had been an usual love, with such a degree of commingling of identities that when Chris died, Erica felt she had lost herself; even now, she said, she did not know if she could be found.” She could not be found – because she could not get over her grief, and admits herself into a clinic for recovery.

And then – New York was attacked. It was September 11, 2001. As both Changez and Erica fall apart, emotions are laid bare. Three years have passed and Changez returns to his home city Lahore, and to the time when the story starts, in the café with the American stranger.

It is a simple story with simple language. Yet it is evocative one minute and aloof the next, understandable one minute, mysterious the next. Rich in psychological suspense, it is intense to the end. A short read, but a good read.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist, telling the story of a brilliant young Pakistani's disillusionment with America, caused a stir when it came out. Its revelations, though, are probably not that ground-shaking. There are people who dislike the great superpower, and it isn't just that they are fanatics, or that they hate liberty, but they are actually discontented at American policies and acts around the world. Surprise, surprise. Hamid is a skilled writer, and this novella has a proper plot, with proper characters; it is not a political tract. As is clear from the beginning, the main protagonist, Changez, is suspected of having joined a fundamentalist cell. But this is after he has gone through the promising beginnings of a career at Princeton and an investment banking firm in New York, and experienced a doomed love affair with a local girl. Flawlessly written, this makes for a finely spun tale. At the same time, I enjoyed Hamid's other work, How to Get Rich in Rising Asia, better. My issue with The Reluctant Fundamentalist is the novella format: there was more to say, much more, and going for a full-length novel would have allowed for a richer work, both along the political and the psychological dimensions.

A bright student from Pakistan finds himself floundering in a post-September 11 world when his intellectual prowess slowly loses traction because of his Muslim faith and brown skin. Despite the fact that he knows he can find better opportunities for a career in the U.S., the student returns to Pakistan to do what he can for his own country. Several years later he meets an American and recounts for that American his personal history. Mohsin Hamid provides readers with this sensitive tale told in an innovative way in The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

The book begins as Changez meets an American stranger in the marketplace of Lahore. Changez begins a casual conversation with the stranger, and slowly he shares his experiences of living in the United States with this new acquaintance. The two share a cup of tea and then a meal as Changez recounts with great fondness his time in the West.

Changez makes the long trek from Lahore, Pakistan, to Princeton, joining some of the academic elite of the United States. As a top student, he excels at Princeton and finds himself invited for an interview at a top valuation firm to join their company and learn the almost-exclusive trade of appraising the worth of businesses. A new millennium has begun, and Changez realizes he has entered the golden sector of American society: with a sought-after career and a new girlfriend, nothing seems poised to hold him back.

He travels to the Philippines for his first assignment for work and spends a few months there. The night he prepares to return to the States, he turns on the TV and witnesses the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York. He has an inkling of the magnanimity of the event as he watches the news unfold:

"I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees."

However, Changez doesn't realize at the moment that his world has changed irrevocably. And why should he have suspected so, he muses to the stranger. After all:

"I was the product of an American university; I was earning a lucrative American salary; I was infatuated with an American woman."

But the world has, indeed, changed, and Changez learns this the minute he returns to the U.S. and must endure extensive questioning at immigration. His positive experience of America begins a slow spiral into a negative one that contains a hostile subtext. Clients of his firm begin looking at him differently. He begins to fear for his family's safety in Pakistan. And his girlfriend confesses that she cannot let go of a key experience in her past. Suddenly everything he loved about the West comes to represent the things he no longer wants, and eventually he decides to return to Pakistan and do what he can for his own people.

Author Hamid handles the potentially explosive plot in an inventive way. He uses a combination of first person to relay Changez's portion of the story and second person when Changez addresses the mysterious stranger. This structure brings the reader right to the table where Changez and the stranger share space, and it allows for the tension and the mystery to build as readers will wonder exactly where Changez's tale will end. From the conversation Changez sounds like a well-adjusted citizen who remembers his time in America with a great deal of fondness, albeit with some mixed emotions in certain points of his story. This will lead readers to question the title and understand its full weight on the last page.

Readers can make it through the entire book in less than 12 hours, and yet the story will stay with them for several days afterward and demand a second reading soon thereafter. The Reluctant Fundamentalist presents the challenges many members of the Muslim population surely had to face because of the common factor of their faith with the 9/11 terrorists. Natives of the Western world will benefit from reading this book; it presents an insightful examination of this extended conflict of terrorism between the United States and select countries.

I highly recommend The Reluctant Fundamentalist not as a way to gain a blind sympathy for one faction or the other in the "war on terror" but as a way to gain a deeper understanding of the way the September 11 attacks changed life for several sectors of society and culture.

Mohsin Hamid's interesting novella "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" is written in the same dramatic monologue style as Albert Camus' The Fall and Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground. In this sense the reader gets an intimate image of the tortured portrait that is Changez's transformation from an American student and businessman into a frustrated and insecure enemy of America.

This book is essentially a metaphor. As one reviewer pointed out before, the names of the important characters represent key elements of the story: if we drop the "z" off of the protagonist's name we get "change"; if we add the prefix "am" to Erica's name we get "America"; and if we add a "t" to the end of Chris's name we get "Christ." Changez is a fresh graduate of Princeton, who enters the work force as a member of an elite New York City business firm whose job it is to value companies and determine where to trim fat (lay off unnecessary workers) for high-paying clients. (Of course, he later realizes that he has become, with his profession, part of what he sees as the problem.)

After September 11 Changez's world begins to be transformed. He experiences anti-Arab sentiment (although he himself is not Arabic, but rather Pakistani); he becomes disillusioned with the way the United States is carrying on the War on Terror in his native home's next door neighbor Afghanistan; and worst of all, his girlfriend Erica relapses into a perpetual melancholy over her dead love, Chris.

Changez reflects on how he had "always thought of America as a nation that looked forward; for the first time I was struck by its determination to look back. Living in New York was suddenly like living in a film about the Second World War; I, as a foreigner, found myself staring out at a set that ought to be viewed not in Technicolor but in grainy black in white. What your fellow countrymen longed for was unclear to me--a time of unquestioned dominance? of safety? of moral certainty? I did not know--but that they were scrambling to don the costumes of another era was apparent."

Thus the voice that Hamid gives Changez is that of an estranged dissenter to the American response to the great upheaval of 9/11. His girlfriend Erica's relapse into a memory-induced depression is a metaphor for this response: America found itself in an uncomfortable position where its easiest response was to look backwards to fundamentals; fundamentals that were, perhaps, irrelevant and obsolete. In sum, Hamid is a talented writer whose book is written with a powerful voice, and is short and entertaining enough to hold the reader's attention throughout this tale of a reluctant fundamentalist.

This is a brave, hard work showing the abyss that separates the West from Islam. At times a realistic narrative, Mohsin Hamid's novel veers into parable, with the narrator, the young Pakistani Changez, representing Islam and Erica, his white American girlfriend mired deep in a psychosis with self-destructive tendencies, representing the West.

It is also the best one-sided dialogue since Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, where a seductively compelling voice carries you along through a story almost against your will.

How does it end? There is a tension throughout the narrative. Who is the American Changez is talking to? Why does the waiter in the restaurant appear menacing? Hamid sets up a scenario of mutually assured destruction and leaves the reader the choice of outcome.

The realistic portion of the narrative -- Changez's career in New York and budding love affair with Erica -- is sharply drawn and readily recognizable. A bright foreign student fits in so well that his colleagues can forget he is foreign and be blissfully unaware of the deep and different currents that run through him. It is the catastrophe of 9/11 that bring these hidden currents to the surface.

There are some striking similarities to Netherland. Both stories involve foreigners who come to New York to work in finance. Both protagonists have their foreignness brought home to them by the terrorist attacks. Both end up going home. For all our globalized markets and economy, an individual's roots in culture and family will exert a pull in times of stress.

Hamid's work is more radical, because Joseph O'Neill's protagonist in Netherland is European, with much more affinity for his host country. It is hard even with the most open mind to accept Changez's feeling of happiness at the destruction of the World Trade Center, but it's important to keep your eyes open and acknowledge the reality of it.

I'll admit I had to check my globe to see where Lahore is located -- right on India's western border. That antagonism adds another layer to the book's conflict. It is not just Islam vs the West, but also against the vast Hindu state on its borders. Pakistan is as artificial a creation as Israel, a refuge based on religion. Oddly, Changez's description of the market, the tea, the food kind of make me want to visit Lahore.

The author bio says Hamid, who grew up in Lahore and attended Princeton like his protagonist, now lives in London, which has become a mecca for diversity. Like other writers from the subcontinent, Hamid has a wonderful, flowing style that is somehow entrancing to read. I'll look for his earlier book, Moth Smoke, and for his next one.

At a café in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man corners an American with a beseeching question, “Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance?”; and so begins Mohsin Hamid’s tale of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Then, in the next 180-odd pages, we live through the Pakistani’s life as he pours out his heart, chapter by chapter, to the unknown American.

We learn that the Pakistani’s name is Changez; that, not too long ago, he was in America, studying in Princeton and then working in one of the most reputed management consulting firms there; that, he was in love with a beautiful white American woman; that, due to a series of events not in his control, and in spite of the loving support of his family and friends, his life comes crashing down to a bitter end… bringing him back to Lahore and to this meeting with an American stranger.

The tale of The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a confession, written in first person in such polite, beseeching and convincing language that I can understand why the unknown American couldn’t walk out of this conversation with Changez. And Mohsin Hamid weaves the tale of The Reluctant Fundamentalist admirably. I certainly hung on to every word of his until I finished reading the book.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a tale of an immigrant’s loss of love, hope and innocence. But, what’s also interesting about the book is that author Hamid presents a unique perspective of a normal Pakistani’s response to the world’s response to global terrorism and how this ‘whole enchilada’ of global terrorism and retribution, and the fear that it envelopes us with, changes the lives of even those who are non-participants… forever.

Mohsin Hamid writes so well that were it not for the propulsive force of his quietly building suspense story, the reader would be tempted to linger over passages of elegantly beautiful prose. THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST is a timely book, yes, but it is far more: the novel underscores the talent of a superlative writer unafraid to place before the public a story that is bound to create a disturbing response at the end of the roller coaster ride.

Cleverly written as a monologue from a Pakistani young man named Changez (a name when pronounced delivers major clues to the story!) as he joins an American in a cafe in Lahore, Pakistan. The story reveals a young lad from a family once well to do in Pakistan, but fractured by the political changes suffered by that country, a lad who goes to America to attend Princeton University where he transforms himself into an 'American stance', performs exceedingly well academically, and joins the wealthy American classmates on jaunts where he encounters the beautiful but mysteriously aloof Erica. Changez and Erica become friends and were it not for Erica's recovering from a loss of her previous lover Chris who died of cancer, the two seem to be destined to become lovers. Erica is from a wealthy family who accepts Changez even more readily when upon graduation he is awarded a position with the prestigious firm Underwood Samson. Changez learns the feeling of the American preoccupation with success and wealth while still being committed to his family ties in Pakistan. While Changez is on a business trip to Manila he watches the 9/11 event and he is surprised that he feels a bit happy that haughty America is being brought to her feet.

Changez returns home finding his physical appearance now a cause for suspicion in the bruised country that afforded him success. He attempts to stay connected with Erica but Erica has retreated into her fragile state of melancholia and is eventually hospitalized. Changez continues his successful climb up the American dream ladder of success until he meets a gentleman Juan-Bautista in Chile who admonishes him that his devotion to his work for American companies might force him to forget the importance of home and family. Changez is changed and his decision regarding his employment, his lack of knowledge of Erica's whereabouts, and his growing anger at America preemptive attacks on countries near his home - all result in his returning to Pakistan, and the encounter with the American at the cafe. And Hamid leaves us there, afloat on a sea of questions and new information about the people we have been attacking and the result is a pungent experience in re-thinking the global atmosphere.

The book is relatively short (184 pages) and since it is written as one extended conversation, it is next to impossible not to read the entire book at one sitting: leaving the story even for a moment would be like leaving a personal encounter - rude. The story is superb, written with facile elegance, and contains views from outside our cloistered world that refreshingly informs us to re-examine our point of view. Highly Recommended on every level. Grady Harp, August 11

Changez is the best Pakistan has to offer the world, brilliant, handsome, ambitious. Nothing can go wrong for him; he sprints through Princeton, best in his class, and easily obtains the best job in New York City and a beautiful American girlfriend.

And then 9/11 happens and everything does go wrong.

It's the way this story is written that is so wonderful. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is written with Changez speaking directly to an unidentified American in Pakistan, a conversation, a dialogue really, that extends the entire length of the book. It felt like Changez was talking directly to me, the reader, confiding in me the animosities, the hurts, the frustrations of those who grow up outside America's borders.

Changez reveals the differences between himself, the outsider, and Americans. He tells us he has come to "savor the denial of gratification." He is irritated with Americans and the "ease with which they spent money", their "self-righteousness". He admires his own ability to function both "respectfully and with self-respect," something he sees Americans as unable to do. He resents Americans, who did not even exist as a people while his ancestors were building a rich civilization.

And what an ending. It's been a long time since I read a book with such a powerful and satisfying ending.

The phrase that comes to mind after reading this books is, "Radically beautiful". While it inspires serious feelings of unrest and makes you question a lot of the political state of the country after 9/11, it is also simply written and flows beautifully. It's a story about something so controversial that's told in the most unique and unexpected way. Honestly I can say I've never read anything like this book.

It's about a man named Changez, a Pakistani immigrant who goes to school at Princeton, and then takes a job in a highly celebrated valuation firm. He proceeds to live his life as an American, not an immigrant. He talks like an American, walks like one, does business like one, all while trying to retain a semblance of self. But when 9/11 happens, his entire world is thrown out of balance. He tries to retain his American identity, but how can you do that when the entire country sees you as the enemy? This conflict inspires a sort of downward spiral for Changez, who's also fallen in love with a woman he can't have for a surprising reason.

The entire story is narrated completely through Changez sharing his story with an American tourist in a cafe in Pakistan. With such an interesting and offbeat narrative style, of course you get something so unique. But it's not just the plot/characters you see from a unique angle. You also see a man who is so in love with America and all it's done for him, who is also completely ostracized because of the blind patriotism of its citizens. This is such a complex relationship for Changez to be dealing with, and it permeates the entire novel. It definitely gives an interesting sense of perspective.

I started reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid solely because it was on the VCE reading list for 2014. It didn’t disappoint.

Summary and Analysis

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a sharp spare novel about twenty-two year old Changez, a Princeton University graduate from Pakistan. This clever novel uses a framed narrative monologue between Changez and an unknown American that takes place almost exclusively in a Lahore market. As day turns into night in Lahore, so to does Changez’s story, moving towards an unknown darkness.

When Changez starts telling his story, it appears that he has the perfect Western capitalist existence: an Ivy League education, a fledgling career on an upward trajectory, an relationship with the beautiful and well-connected Erica, a circle of influential friends and access to all that New York, a city that is home to “Masters of the Universe” has to offer.

Yet we know that something has changed significantly for Changez. After all, what is brilliant Princeton graduate, worldly and well-spoken, doing speaking to us (the American traveller/businessman) in a night market in Lahore, Pakistan?

Concluding Comments

Compelling and well-written, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a page turner. Easy to read, insightful and intelligent, it makes the reader think deeply about the capitalist, material-driven society in which we live. It also reminds us of the beauty and power of love – both old and new. Hamid’s strength as a writer is not in what he chooses to tell us about Changez, but what he leaves out.

Ranking – 7.5/10

Book Details

Published in 2007 by Penguin Books. ISBN: 978-0-141-02954-

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One of those books I didn't think I'd like from the title, having no particular interest in Islam or politics.
But I was immediately drawn into it. The leading character, Changez, is addressing an American he meets in a Lahore teashop (and by extension you the reader.) Hamid never lets you forget you're being 'talked at' rather than reading an autobiography; Changez regularly asks questions or makes polite comments to his American (although the latter's voice is never heard.)
Changez begins his narrative when he was a student in the US. As an outstanding Pakistani youth he got a scholarship to Princeton. Here religion doesn't seem to feature in his life at all- he aims high, mixes with his classmates, drinks, holidays, falls in love and ultimately lands a prestigious job.
But cracks start to emerge in his American persona:
'I was a modern day janissary, a servant of the American empire at a time when it was invading a country with a kinship to mine.'
Unputdownable.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a cleverly written tale told entirely in the first person. Changez meets a man he assumes is American by the way the man carries himself. "It was your bearing that allowed me to identify you ... for I see your face is hardened." Changez, a Pakistani sporting a beard, and the American sit together for tea and a meal at an outside restaurant in Lahore, Pakistan.

Changez begins his fascinating, rapid fire story explaining how he spent four and a half years in America, where he graduated from Princeton and secured a good job with a valuation firm: Underwood Samson & Company. The Reluctant Fundamentalist quickly became adjusted, thriving in the Big Apple where he considered himself more New Yorker than American. Although the university secured his future, it "could not make me forget ... the city of my birth."

Changez tells the American how enamored he was with women's provocative attire compared to the traditional dress of Pakistan. He talks of a relationship with a woman named Erica whose former lover, Chris, died of cancer during an intense, intimate partnership. Although Changez desired her sexually, Erica could never forget Chris' ghost to become involved in another love affair.

As he speaks, gentle Changez notices the hand of his American acquaintance clenched into a tight fist after saying he smiled when the twin towers fell on 9/11. To lighten the moment he says he "was caught up in the symbolism of it all," powerful America was "so visibly brought to her knees." To further ease tension, he almost rebukes the American by asking if he does not feel joy at video clips showing "American munitions laying waste the structures of your enemies?"

A deep personal tension builds throughout The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Because bearded Changez looks foreign, he says he felt victimized after 9/11. When his other business partners passed through immigration without incident on a return trip from Manilla, he was pulled aside and practically strip-searched. All too often, a tire on his auto would be punctured, his badge went missing, his phone or fax line stopped working. He tells how he felt singled out even among friends.

When the United States bombed terrorist targets in Afghanistan, Changez saw TV footage of American troops raiding a Taliban command post. He tells of the horror he felt as innocent country folk were sometimes killed along with suspected terrorists. Wrath overwhelmed him. Afghanistan and Pakistan were friendly Muslin neighbors. U.S. troops in Afghanistan could plunge the entire area into war since India was already flexing her muscles toward Pakistan.

Changez continues baring his deepest feelings to the American as they eat. He confesses how disturbed he became to realize that as an evaluation analyst, he was enabling businesses in the United States or in puppet-like countries which shared similar philosophical ideals. These same conglomerates were responsible for American power, politics, and war mongering in the Middle East. As a result, he left everything: his moneyed job, his American friends, and Erica whom he never again located.

Toward the end of their meal, Changez explains in detail how he returned to Pakistan where, as a university lecturer, he now used this platform to turn his countrymen against the United States. He organized student rallies to demonstrate for the independence of Pakistan's domestic and international affairs - demonstrations the press would label anti-American. Speaking before international television that came on campus, Changez told the networks: "... no country inflicts death so readily upon the inhabitants of other countries ... so far away, as America."

After their meal together ends, Changez walks his increasingly suspicious American acquaintance to his hotel. "I know you have found some of my views offensive," he says, but "...we are bound by a certain shared intimacy."
This tale will move anyone who has seen the demise of New York's twin towers, but from two different viewpoints. On the one hand, Americans see the catastrophic collision of jet liners into each of the towers that eventually collapsed killing thousands trapped inside.

On the other hand, The Reluctant Fundamentalist sees the murderous effects of retaliatory war wrought in emotional anger against nations whose peoples are innocent but whose leaders or uncontrolled terrorist enclaves are caught up in religious fundamentalist philosophies. And who suffers - innocents on both sides.

Americans have overwhelmingly demonstrated to President Obama that war in Iraq is abortive. The Iraqi people, while glad Hussein is gone, clearly indicate that United States occupation during their civil war is not welcome. Yet America persists. Innocents are killed daily - the very people The Reluctant Fundamentalist spoke about.

Although it is written in the first person, the story is not a monotonous diatribe. It becomes clear from Changez's words that the American indicates with a shrug, a nod, a frown, or in unrecorded dialogue that he is listening to The The Reluctant Fundamentalist's every word and encourages him to continue. The story is well thought out and meticulously written. It might be my imagination but I found myself reading it quickly as if Changez was talking to me.

There is a lot to learn from Changez's story. In spite of America's desire to police the world, other nations do not like interference by force. It is time to step back and let those peoples feel they must and can fend for themselves.

Other interesting reads:
Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia
The Idea of Pakistan
In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan

In "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," Mohsin Hamid expertly and precisely weaves a tale of struggle, alienation, self-discovery, and ultimately redemption. The themes and the plot are no strangers in the literary landscape, and are indeed well-trod, but it is the very personal to the point of autobiographical voice that gives this tale its compelling and absorbing texture.

Changez, a scion of the downtrodden Pakistani aristocracy, graduates from Princeton and becomes a Janissary in the service of the global financial order. His obsession with American wealth becomes personified in Erica, a Princeton classmates who suffers from depression and who seeks consolation and salvation in Changez.

Changez's fairy tale is ripped apart after 9/11 and after India threatens to go to war in Pakistan, and it is at this point that Changez must struggle with his identity. It is a struggle that finally takes him home, and turns him into an ex-Janissary.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid is an incredible, mind altering story filled with ominous suspense, and an attentive outside view of America.

The story is told in an interesting way, narrated by Changez to an American acquaintance while sitting at a café in Lahore. I both liked and disliked this style of storytelling. In the beginning I had a difficult time connecting with the characters, but that changed as I came to the middle and end of the story. The conversational tone made the book quick and easy to read.
Changez tells his story of attending college in America and excelling in the corporate world. After 9/11, though, his life in the US begins to unravel as he feels torn between his roots in Pakistan and his new life in America. All the while, Changez engages in a doomed love affair with Erica, this golden girl drowning in her love for her dead boyfriend.

I feel as though the relationship Changez had with Erica was a metaphor for his relationship with America and being American. He fell fast and hard, quickly becoming a part of her world. He accompanied her to many events and parties and was accepted easily, but still felt like an outsider on some level. After 9/11 she withdrew from him, making him less a part of her world and then shutting him out altogether. She longed for something that was no longer attainable; Changez longed to feel a part of her world again, even if that meant pretending to be someone he wasn't.

I loved seeing America through Changez's eyes. I thought that reading this book wouldn't alter my perspective too much because I'm a fan of novels set in the Middle East. I thought my perspectives had been changed a long while ago. In the story, Changez talks about how little America experiences the effects of war at home. War isn't fought on our soil. We don't fear for our lives and our safety everyday like so many other people around the world. Changez's home country of Pakistan was NOT at war with America or Afghanistan, yet they felt the impact much more deeply than we did as Americans. In this way, my view of the world has been profoundly altered. I would recommend this book if only just for the new outlook.

I admire Mohsin Hamid for the masterful way he tells the complex life story of Changez through a seamless monologue in The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I say complex, but in many ways Changez life contained the typical life hurdles faced by any young man: the innocent pursuit and longing for a love relationship that is not to be; the confusion as the identity instilled in you through family and culture is challenged by new and sparkly things; and the challenges faced when we realize we relate to the view from the outside as we stand amidst the insiders.

Changez seemed to me an actor or fraud in almost all aspects of his life. He seemed a person bent on denying who he was. At college he hid his financial status by working jobs in a neighboring city; at work he hid his family circumstances and his upraising to all but his boss (who identified it for Changez); in his relationship with Erica he willing took the persona of her dead lover to have the opportunity to make love to her; and upon returning to his homeland denied the positives of what he had been given in America. He could have been a powerful positive voice against what he saw as negatives in the Pakistan-United States relationship upon his return. Instead he amplified the negatives. A pity, but so it is.

Throughout the book I also kept thinking that this story could equally be written on a domestic level. An anxious and nervous white man eyes his surroundings as he listens to the story of a kind black man in Harlem, or an anxious and nervous black man eyes his surroundings as he listens to the story by a kind Latino man in East Los Angeles, or an anxious and nervous Latino man eyes his surroundings as he listens to the story of a kind Italian man in Little Italy in any town, and so on. Maybe that's the point, on a micro level we're all the same as on a macro level.

One point did seem a stretch to me in the book. Changez has lived his life as a quiet, respectful man who seldom was the outspoken voice in any situation. Yet, the book is centered on a multi-hour monologue by Changez to a complete stranger. This seemed a stretch to me.

Enjoy the book. It's a great read that has multiple layers.

Hamid has written some of the most beautiful prose that I have read in a long time. His story is simple: Changez, a Pakistani man, tells an American stranger in Lahore about his years in the USA. The book is a long monologue since the American never speaks and the entire monologue is over an evening's meal. It is very clearly written and the beauty is in its simplicity. Hamid creates suspense and urges the reader to continue reading to find out how a successful bright young man can be radicalized in the USA. In light of the recent attempt to blow up an airline on Christmas day by another young bright 23 year old, I was particularly curious to read this book.

I found Changez' journey to fundamentalism not very convincing which was a bit disappointing. Nevertheless the author brings up so many interesting issues for the reader to think about that I think makes the book worthy of 5 stars. The author used to work at McKinsey, a management consulting firm. It is clear that he has drawn on his experiences at McKinsey to tell Changez' work stories at Underwood Samson, a valuation firm. With writing this beautiful, Hamid is on his way to perhaps winning the Booker prize someday . The writing was reminiscent of Ishiguro's "Remains of the Day". Highly recommended.

Mohsin Hamid's "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" seeks to elucidate the complex emotions successful immigrants into Western society feel about their own ethnicity, culture. identity and place in a superficially welcoming foreign culture. The unnamed tourist Changez addresses himself to in his narrative is merely a literary devise standing for the reader - quite clearly a foreigner - not necessarily but most likely American or European.

The format of this slim yet profound little novella is quite simple. Hamid enters the psyche of Changez, his protagonist who now returned to his own country reflects on the years he had spent in America, the proverbial land of opportunity open to whomsoever had the talent and the determination to make it. And make it he did - until things started to go wrong and then fall apart for him in his private and professional life following the 9/11 incident.

But why doesn't Changez feel unalloyed gratitude to America ? After all, America gave him the chance to elevate himself above the grinding poverty of his motherland and make a better life for himself in a new place. Worse and more puzzling is, why he feels secretly pleased - even if it's for the smallest fraction of a moment - when he learns about the 9/11 attack ? The answers are there on the pages, written between the lines. Admiration for the host country's progressive values, mixed with a secret burning shame from having to subordinate one's own ethnicity simply to be accepted and then finding out that despite making these quiet concessions, one isn't and can never be accepted due to racial and religious differences. The result is a rage difficult to fathom and even more impossible to explain. The sheen of civility that exists between host and guest is shown to be fragile in the best of times. It shatters and then evaporates in an instant under stress.

Hamid has written a wonderful little book. His language is direct and sincere. He makes no apologies for either Changez or his host country. The bitterness and cryptic tone in Changez's voice conveys a disappointment that merely states a fact but doesn't attribute blame. Whether intentionally or not, Hamid made it hard for me to empathize with Changez's girlfriend Erica, her endless pining for her dead fiancé Chris and subsequent mental decline. She knew how Changez felt about her and yet used him - in my view - for a shoulder to cry on. Get over Chris or leave Changez alone. I wanted badly for him to throw her over. Pity he didn't and sadly paid for it. Even Erica's mother's liberalism didn't help me like the family better. Maybe Hamid intended to contrast the sensitive self absorbed individual Western psyche with more pragmatic Eastern concerns. Maybe not.

"The Reluctant Fundamentalist" is a timely reminder that globalisation may make the world flatter but doesn't make all cultures the same. The challenges are great and unless unceasing efforts are made to bridge people across cultures, peace will always be a mirage disrupted by race, language and religion. A wonderful little book. Buy it - you won't be disappointed.

"The Reluctant Fundamentalist" is very well written and cleverly constructed. Moshin Hamid creastes a fascinating tableau from which his reader is challenged to see the western world through the eyes of a disillusioned outsider. For the ambitious young Pakistani who sails through Princeton and lands a lucrative job on Wall Street, assimilation in the inner workings of western capitalist society seems to promise everything. Or does it? For very soon the aptly named Changez sees from individuals from even the most privileged echelons of US society can become lost and alienated. After the world changing events of September 2001, he begins to rebuild his identity from the outside in, beginning by resuming his national dress and then growing his beard before returning to his homeland. But how much has he really changed? He remains the charming and friendly narrator, gently teasing, teaching and reassuring his uncertain foreign guest. Perhaps Hamid's real point is that we are not really all that different after all.

Changez is the best Pakistan has to offer the world, brilliant, handsome, ambitious. Nothing can go wrong for him; he sprints through Princeton, best in his class, and easily obtains the best job in New York City and a beautiful American girlfriend.

And then 9/11 happens and everything does go wrong.

It's the way this story is written that is so wonderful. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is written with Changez speaking directly to an unidentified American in Pakistan, a conversation, a dialogue really, that extends the entire length of the book. It felt like Changez was talking directly to me, the reader, confiding in me the animosities, the hurts, the frustrations of those who grow up outside America's borders.

Changez reveals the differences between himself, the outsider, and Americans. He tells us he has come to "savor the denial of gratification." He is irritated with Americans and the "ease with which they spent money", their "self-righteousness". He admires his own ability to function both "respectfully and with self-respect," something he sees Americans as unable to do. He resents Americans, who did not even exist as a people while his ancestors were building a rich civilization.

And what an ending. It's been a long time since I read a book with such a powerful and satisfying ending.

On the next to last page, the Pakistani Princeton-educated narrator, says, "I have felt rather like a Kurtz waiting for his Marlowe." This allusion to Heart of Darkness is very illuminating, as Hamid's book bears several similarities to Conrad's novel. First, the narrator is telling his story to an unidentified stranger, although in this case the narrator is the Kurtz-like character. More telling, though, is the fact that Changez's story is that of a star team player run amok. The revelation at the end will tell you who is the Marlowe character and will make you want to reread the novel. The title is a little puzzling, since Changez is encouraged in his New York job to focus on fundamentals. He is, however, never reluctant in that regard. He is either totally gung-ho or totally apathetic. I think he is "reluctant" to abandon his American lifestyle to re-engage with his "fundamental" Pakistani roots, but 9/11 and the U.S. response to that tragedy have a sudden and jarring impact on his perspective. I'm not sure, either, what purpose his girlfriend Erica serves, as she loses her own way in her grief for a lost love. Perhaps she is a metaphor for the U.S. in its post-9/11 grief, but my biggest complaint about the book is that no clear explanation is given for Changez's obsession with her. I suppose that he just longs for something he can never have, just as he can never fully blend in with lighter-skinned Americans. All symbolism aside, the rhythm of the prose somehow evokes the narrator's heritage and builds suspense, right up until the last sentence. There is also some clever wordplay that made me smile, such as "Maximum return was the maxim to which we returned, time and again."

In "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," Mohsin Hamid expertly and precisely weaves a tale of struggle, alienation, self-discovery, and ultimately redemption. The themes and the plot are no strangers in the literary landscape, and are indeed well-trod, but it is the very personal to the point of autobiographical voice that gives this tale its compelling and absorbing texture.

Changez, a scion of the downtrodden Pakistani aristocracy, graduates from Princeton and becomes a Janissary in the service of the global financial order. His obsession with American wealth becomes personified in Erica, a Princeton classmates who suffers from depression and who seeks consolation and salvation in Changez.

Changez's fairy tale is ripped apart after 9/11 and after India threatens to go to war in Pakistan, and it is at this point that Changez must struggle with his identity. It is a struggle that finally takes him home, and turns him into an ex-Janissary.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid is an incredible, mind altering story filled with ominous suspense, and an attentive outside view of America.

The story is told in an interesting way, narrated by Changez to an American acquaintance while sitting at a café in Lahore. I both liked and disliked this style of storytelling. In the beginning I had a difficult time connecting with the characters, but that changed as I came to the middle and end of the story. The conversational tone made the book quick and easy to read.
Changez tells his story of attending college in America and excelling in the corporate world. After 9/11, though, his life in the US begins to unravel as he feels torn between his roots in Pakistan and his new life in America. All the while, Changez engages in a doomed love affair with Erica, this golden girl drowning in her love for her dead boyfriend.

I feel as though the relationship Changez had with Erica was a metaphor for his relationship with America and being American. He fell fast and hard, quickly becoming a part of her world. He accompanied her to many events and parties and was accepted easily, but still felt like an outsider on some level. After 9/11 she withdrew from him, making him less a part of her world and then shutting him out altogether. She longed for something that was no longer attainable; Changez longed to feel a part of her world again, even if that meant pretending to be someone he wasn't.

I loved seeing America through Changez's eyes. I thought that reading this book wouldn't alter my perspective too much because I'm a fan of novels set in the Middle East. I thought my perspectives had been changed a long while ago. In the story, Changez talks about how little America experiences the effects of war at home. War isn't fought on our soil. We don't fear for our lives and our safety everyday like so many other people around the world. Changez's home country of Pakistan was NOT at war with America or Afghanistan, yet they felt the impact much more deeply than we did as Americans. In this way, my view of the world has been profoundly altered. I would recommend this book if only just for the new outlook.

I admire Mohsin Hamid for the masterful way he tells the complex life story of Changez through a seamless monologue in The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I say complex, but in many ways Changez life contained the typical life hurdles faced by any young man: the innocent pursuit and longing for a love relationship that is not to be; the confusion as the identity instilled in you through family and culture is challenged by new and sparkly things; and the challenges faced when we realize we relate to the view from the outside as we stand amidst the insiders.

Changez seemed to me an actor or fraud in almost all aspects of his life. He seemed a person bent on denying who he was. At college he hid his financial status by working jobs in a neighboring city; at work he hid his family circumstances and his upraising to all but his boss (who identified it for Changez); in his relationship with Erica he willing took the persona of her dead lover to have the opportunity to make love to her; and upon returning to his homeland denied the positives of what he had been given in America. He could have been a powerful positive voice against what he saw as negatives in the Pakistan-United States relationship upon his return. Instead he amplified the negatives. A pity, but so it is.

Throughout the book I also kept thinking that this story could equally be written on a domestic level. An anxious and nervous white man eyes his surroundings as he listens to the story of a kind black man in Harlem, or an anxious and nervous black man eyes his surroundings as he listens to the story by a kind Latino man in East Los Angeles, or an anxious and nervous Latino man eyes his surroundings as he listens to the story of a kind Italian man in Little Italy in any town, and so on. Maybe that's the point, on a micro level we're all the same as on a macro level.

One point did seem a stretch to me in the book. Changez has lived his life as a quiet, respectful man who seldom was the outspoken voice in any situation. Yet, the book is centered on a multi-hour monologue by Changez to a complete stranger. This seemed a stretch to me.

Enjoy the book. It's a great read that has multiple layers.

Hamid has written some of the most beautiful prose that I have read in a long time. His story is simple: Changez, a Pakistani man, tells an American stranger in Lahore about his years in the USA. The book is a long monologue since the American never speaks and the entire monologue is over an evening's meal. It is very clearly written and the beauty is in its simplicity. Hamid creates suspense and urges the reader to continue reading to find out how a successful bright young man can be radicalized in the USA. In light of the recent attempt to blow up an airline on Christmas day by another young bright 23 year old, I was particularly curious to read this book.

I found Changez' journey to fundamentalism not very convincing which was a bit disappointing. Nevertheless the author brings up so many interesting issues for the reader to think about that I think makes the book worthy of 5 stars. The author used to work at McKinsey, a management consulting firm. It is clear that he has drawn on his experiences at McKinsey to tell Changez' work stories at Underwood Samson, a valuation firm. With writing this beautiful, Hamid is on his way to perhaps winning the Booker prize someday . The writing was reminiscent of Ishiguro's "Remains of the Day". Highly recommended.

Mohsin Hamid's "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" seeks to elucidate the complex emotions successful immigrants into Western society feel about their own ethnicity, culture. identity and place in a superficially welcoming foreign culture. The unnamed tourist Changez addresses himself to in his narrative is merely a literary devise standing for the reader - quite clearly a foreigner - not necessarily but most likely American or European.

The format of this slim yet profound little novella is quite simple. Hamid enters the psyche of Changez, his protagonist who now returned to his own country reflects on the years he had spent in America, the proverbial land of opportunity open to whomsoever had the talent and the determination to make it. And make it he did - until things started to go wrong and then fall apart for him in his private and professional life following the 9/11 incident.

But why doesn't Changez feel unalloyed gratitude to America ? After all, America gave him the chance to elevate himself above the grinding poverty of his motherland and make a better life for himself in a new place. Worse and more puzzling is, why he feels secretly pleased - even if it's for the smallest fraction of a moment - when he learns about the 9/11 attack ? The answers are there on the pages, written between the lines. Admiration for the host country's progressive values, mixed with a secret burning shame from having to subordinate one's own ethnicity simply to be accepted and then finding out that despite making these quiet concessions, one isn't and can never be accepted due to racial and religious differences. The result is a rage difficult to fathom and even more impossible to explain. The sheen of civility that exists between host and guest is shown to be fragile in the best of times. It shatters and then evaporates in an instant under stress.

Hamid has written a wonderful little book. His language is direct and sincere. He makes no apologies for either Changez or his host country. The bitterness and cryptic tone in Changez's voice conveys a disappointment that merely states a fact but doesn't attribute blame. Whether intentionally or not, Hamid made it hard for me to empathize with Changez's girlfriend Erica, her endless pining for her dead fiancé Chris and subsequent mental decline. She knew how Changez felt about her and yet used him - in my view - for a shoulder to cry on. Get over Chris or leave Changez alone. I wanted badly for him to throw her over. Pity he didn't and sadly paid for it. Even Erica's mother's liberalism didn't help me like the family better. Maybe Hamid intended to contrast the sensitive self absorbed individual Western psyche with more pragmatic Eastern concerns. Maybe not.

"The Reluctant Fundamentalist" is a timely reminder that globalisation may make the world flatter but doesn't make all cultures the same. The challenges are great and unless unceasing efforts are made to bridge people across cultures, peace will always be a mirage disrupted by race, language and religion. A wonderful little book. Buy it - you won't be disappointed.

"The Reluctant Fundamentalist" is very well written and cleverly constructed. Moshin Hamid creastes a fascinating tableau from which his reader is challenged to see the western world through the eyes of a disillusioned outsider. For the ambitious young Pakistani who sails through Princeton and lands a lucrative job on Wall Street, assimilation in the inner workings of western capitalist society seems to promise everything. Or does it? For very soon the aptly named Changez sees from individuals from even the most privileged echelons of US society can become lost and alienated. After the world changing events of September 2001, he begins to rebuild his identity from the outside in, beginning by resuming his national dress and then growing his beard before returning to his homeland. But how much has he really changed? He remains the charming and friendly narrator, gently teasing, teaching and reassuring his uncertain foreign guest. Perhaps Hamid's real point is that we are not really all that different after all.

Changez is the best Pakistan has to offer the world, brilliant, handsome, ambitious. Nothing can go wrong for him; he sprints through Princeton, best in his class, and easily obtains the best job in New York City and a beautiful American girlfriend.

And then 9/11 happens and everything does go wrong.

It's the way this story is written that is so wonderful. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is written with Changez speaking directly to an unidentified American in Pakistan, a conversation, a dialogue really, that extends the entire length of the book. It felt like Changez was talking directly to me, the reader, confiding in me the animosities, the hurts, the frustrations of those who grow up outside America's borders.

Changez reveals the differences between himself, the outsider, and Americans. He tells us he has come to "savor the denial of gratification." He is irritated with Americans and the "ease with which they spent money", their "self-righteousness". He admires his own ability to function both "respectfully and with self-respect," something he sees Americans as unable to do. He resents Americans, who did not even exist as a people while his ancestors were building a rich civilization.

And what an ending. It's been a long time since I read a book with such a powerful and satisfying ending.

On the next to last page, the Pakistani Princeton-educated narrator, says, "I have felt rather like a Kurtz waiting for his Marlowe." This allusion to Heart of Darkness is very illuminating, as Hamid's book bears several similarities to Conrad's novel. First, the narrator is telling his story to an unidentified stranger, although in this case the narrator is the Kurtz-like character. More telling, though, is the fact that Changez's story is that of a star team player run amok. The revelation at the end will tell you who is the Marlowe character and will make you want to reread the novel. The title is a little puzzling, since Changez is encouraged in his New York job to focus on fundamentals. He is, however, never reluctant in that regard. He is either totally gung-ho or totally apathetic. I think he is "reluctant" to abandon his American lifestyle to re-engage with his "fundamental" Pakistani roots, but 9/11 and the U.S. response to that tragedy have a sudden and jarring impact on his perspective. I'm not sure, either, what purpose his girlfriend Erica serves, as she loses her own way in her grief for a lost love. Perhaps she is a metaphor for the U.S. in its post-9/11 grief, but my biggest complaint about the book is that no clear explanation is given for Changez's obsession with her. I suppose that he just longs for something he can never have, just as he can never fully blend in with lighter-skinned Americans. All symbolism aside, the rhythm of the prose somehow evokes the narrator's heritage and builds suspense, right up until the last sentence. There is also some clever wordplay that made me smile, such as "Maximum return was the maxim to which we returned, time and again."

This short work is hard to put down. I found it rather compelling, well-written, and convincing, in the sense that the narrator's voice seemed sincere. The story of disgruntled Ivy League graduates is going to be very much on everyone's minds now that the First Lady is in the spotlight. Mrs. Obama seems to have her own story to tell about feeling out of place among America's trust fund brats. Be that as it may, Hamid convincingly tells his story of upward mobility at Princeton and then on to Wall Street. Resentment is easily cultivated; this is the story of a fellow who rises quickly, wanting nothing but money and success until he realizes that there is more to life than first-class flights to the ends of the earth. It is not entirely clear whether this is all the Princeton had to teach; what is clear is that this is all that Hamid came to America for. When he sorts it all out, he blames America. Something tells me that this is what he learned at Princeton, since this is more or less all that one hears from writers educated in such places. Still his story is not to be dismissed. The relationship between the Princeton grad from Pakistan and his reluctant girlfriend strikes me as the heart of the story, but this relationship is not nearly as easily sorted out as the politics of the author. He's found himself a deeply disturbed gal who can't get over the death of a previous boyfriend. Just what this means is unclear, but one can't help wondering if the author is trying to wrap a political parable around a soft psychological center.

A thought-provoking novel. The main character, Changez is a very human person, polite and well-spoken as he tells his story and someone that could easily be that person who lives next door, or that co-worker that has always been so polite.

His reaction to 9/11 was, I think, realistic, and the first real indication of who he actually is. Despite the fact that he was given opportunities galore (Free education, extraordinary job opportunities) he still resents the U.S. - and that seems...more A thought-provoking novel. The main character, Changez is a very human person, polite and well-spoken as he tells his story and someone that could easily be that person who lives next door, or that co-worker that has always been so polite.

His reaction to 9/11 was, I think, realistic, and the first real indication of who he actually is. Despite the fact that he was given opportunities galore (Free education, extraordinary job opportunities) he still resents the U.S. - and that seems tied to his resentment of how times in Pakistan grow worse throughout the years.

The love story with Erica was heart-breaking, and the ending was chilling.

Recommended for those who want a glimpse of how the "other side" not directly involved in the terrorist attacks might have felt and reacted.

Interesting view of the U.S. through a fictitious Pakistani's eyes as his spirit deteriorates due to the political and personal events he endures. Periodically, somewhat affected voice due to the style of narration, but a nonetheless quick and compelling read.

I think some reviewer have conflated the narrator's voice with the author's. I doubt very much that Mohsin Hamid agrees with every word he placed in the mouth his narrator's mouth. (This should go without saying, but we live in very literal and very divisive times.) Rather he was showing how the narrator's character change was precipitated by a number events (again both political and personal), which he weathered. In other words, the narrator's anger towards the United States was inextricably wound up with his pain at losing his lover. He was unable to tease these apart and it lead him into a different, more volatile state of mind. The fact that Hamid can demonstrate this unraveling makes him a sensitive writer and a keen observer of the human condition, not an advocate for terrorism. That said, the book does include some pointed and relevant criticism of the U.S. I just think it's an oversimplification to assume Hamid's giving the narrator's point of view a big thumbs up. It's a richer, more sophisticated narrative than that.

Not an easy read for an American who worked to flush out terrorist groups. I wish he had shared any feelings about the make-up of the initial 9/11 strike teams versus the two countries attacked, but his focus on his nation is understandable.

It took me a long time to make up my mind as to what rating I should give. The main reason for that was that this is an unusual book in many ways.

The book is written in the form of a narration by the main character, or rather it is a dialogue but we never hear the words of the person he is talking to. What the second character is doing or saying is clear, but we learn that from the main character. We do not know who this other person is.

At the end, the reader gets an inkling of what the other person may be or is about to do. But the reader has to come to their own conclusions. This is perhaps one attraction of the book, and for me the best one in that the reader has to think about what is being said and is happening and they may never know whether they have come to the right conclusions.

The title of the book is also interesting. Because of the current climate the word fundamentalist conjures up the image of a a person who is very fundamentalist about their religion, more often than not Islam. The significance of religion to Changez, the main character is never referred to. He in fact, believes in other fundamentals. This can be a shock to the reader because the title could have led the reader to believe that the book could be an analysis of how an individual can become a religious fundamentalist.

Mohsin Hamid is a very perceptive writer. There are very many themes intertwined in the narrative; what makes someone leave their country in Asia and become a successful employee in the United States; what are the adjustments and tensions for someone brought up in one culture and having to adapt to another one; what is it that brings about change in a person's thinking and values. There are many more.

This is a book that is easy to read but unlike many other works of fiction, it leaves the reader wanting to go back as there are many questions that need to be asked, and answered. When a book does this to a reader, the author must be very talented.

Two people eating a meal in Lahore, a large city in Pakistan. We only hear one of them speak, Changez, the title character himself. As for his compatriot, a mysterious American, we only catch clues of what he says or does by Changez's responses to him. That is all that really takes place in THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST. Despite this sparse outline, the book is captivating.

The great appeal of THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST is its absolutely stunning prose. The dialogue and descriptions are simple and direct, yet capture the beauty of the English language in a manner not easily matched by even better known authors. For those interested in a book demonstrating absolute command of language but lacking in the pretentiousness of too many modern novels, this would be an excellent choice.

Changez takes us back in time with him, when he arrives in America and gets along relatively well for such an outsider. First Princeton, then a challenging job at a prestigious valuation firm in New York City, and maybe, just maybe, a beautiful girl as well. He seems to be taking the first solid steps to the good life, particularly important to Changez as his family back in Pakistan, once quite prominent, has seen its own prestige fall further into the past.

But like a painfully tiny imperfection that appears in a once flawless diamond, which mars the entire stone and cannot be ignored by those who see it, a slight crack appears in Changez's perception of the world, his adopted country, and himself. The book is so well written that, when the crack appears, we instantly recognize it as small yet also realize that it will consume the whole. Just give it time.

The plot starts strong but loses some steam in the second half. Changez's perceptions of anti-Muslim sentiment post-9/11 are probably more true than many Westerners want to believe, but also probably less true than is actually the case. I cannot say whether the author purposefully failed to have Changez explore this possibility within himself.

Further, although I do not mind ambiguous endings, the one here is a bit much. Even for the unknown, most people will want a bit more to sink their teeth into simply to speculate as to who certain people are and exactly what is going on. Again, however, the prose keeps the reader's attention and I would not discourage someone from reading THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST based on a few weaknesses in an otherwise strong text. Mohsin Hamid is an author to watch.

As a Middle Eastern immigrant and author of the The Last Moderate Muslim, 9/11 wreaked havoc on my world, differently. In my case, I got devastated primarily by the loss of innocent lives, and secondarily by kissing my new way of life good bye. "They are here" is the thought that crossed my mind. Another one, "Where should I go to start and sustain a good life away from these thugs...where should I go?" to say the least.

Mohsin's story grants readers a unique point of view into the rooted cultural factors that weigh immigrants down. Yes! Down!

America and the for the most part the western world open their arms to the intelligent, hard working, and seemingly adaptive individuals. In return, the rewards in personal and professional growth are astronomical. That is the protagonist experience in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, until of course, he begins to internalize cues that can be overcome with staying the course, and opening the mind and heart a bit more.

Changez decided to return to a place from which education was unmatched to that in the USA and most certainly job opportunities. You can't get such a position in the third world without knowing highly influential - corrupt individuals. The choices he made were poor, and most certainly for readers were clear.

I do know why Changez returned to Pakistan. He made a decision, where he aligned his soul, and heart, where his body was not. He never left Pakistan.

The character's return to Pakistan makes an important statement: Many among us are unable to unsubscribe from our upbringing, culture, and education and question the lack of wisdom of the religious and political leaders. Most return to the homeland driven by an inner and inexplicable calling. That label, "homeland" should be eliminated from the lexicon of an immigrant intent on starting a new life. It is a frame of mind and heart. Moreover, it is more alarming, if some are still here and not really here. That applies to those of all faiths eagerly working on the heavenly life sacrificing earthly and humane harmonic relations.

I think the story is phenomenal in making that connection clearer.

The book is well written and readable at a fast pace. I read it over a couple of hours.

However, it comes across as shallow in its portrayal of the protagonists move toward anti-Western sentiment. Changez goes through absolutely no personal experience of any sort - discrimination, humiliation, indoctrination - that could possibly cause such a radical change in thinking.

For a person with an Ivy League education and considered the top mind of his country, it's unfathomable that simply watching television or reading newspapers would lead to such a stunted thought process. Especially silly and tenuous was the connection to the janissaries.

For a more challenging and nuanced view of the internal conflicts that educated and westernized Muslims (especially Pakistanis) undergo, watch the film Khuda Kay Liye (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khuda_Kay_Liye).

The book, this book was as a whole very interesting and intriguing, and I read it in one day (24 hour period). The storytelling brought me into Changez's life and took me to where he was. However, I will warn this is a book where the main character has a chip on his shoulder. Changez is a 22 year old from Pakistan, who graduates from Princeton at the top of his class and gets one of the most coveted jobs in his field. But he becomes disillusioned with his "American Dream" when the twin towers fall and his fears that he does not belong in this enemy nation prevail. The more he is affected by the events of 9-11 he falls deeper and deeper into dislike for America and seemingly everything American.

As much as I enjoyed reading this book, because the writing of it was fully captivating, I did not like to be schooled and preached at.Much of the novel is Changez retelling his time in America to his American tourist stranger-friend visiting Pakistan, he says: your country this, and you do that (referring to Americans). I think this approach is flawed. I do agree that he would have gone through horrid experiences after the attack of the twin towers, as far as people responding poorly to him, and being very angry at him even though he did nothing. I guess I was in the boat for being compassionate about that, but not for blaming the US for his being in NY and graduating from Princeton...which Changez comes to view as if he had been captured and brought here to be a traitor. .

What I will take from it is this: I loved the writing style Hamin used it kept me interested in the whole story, and his characters were lovable and real and it was easy to become emotionally invested in their lives.
It was extremely difficult for middle eastern folk in the US, especially right after the 9-11 incident. America became sour and angry and channeled their aggressions where it should not have. But, I will not apologize for the brief scene of patriotism that struck after the planes crashed, the flags, the unity, the feelings of brotherhood. Changez was annoyed by this, saying that we to embrace patriotism was to go back in time to WWI, more generalizations. HA!

All in all I would recommend this, but let people know the author is pushy. It is somewhat understandable, but I am not into being shoved either way. I won't be made to hate to hate the US and I won't be made to hate everything unknown. Just be aware of the anti-American sentiment. Some readers will not have a hard time with it at all, as it is the prevalent mentality that you hear around here (liberal northwest)from bums at coffee shops, and even many people of stature in our communities here. However, because it is not my view I felt pushed around, or maybe lumped into a generalization, which is seems hypocritical for the author to do since as far as I can tell that is what he fights against.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist quote:

But as I reacclimatized and my surroundings once again became familiar, it occurred to me that the house had not changed in my absence. I had changed; I was looking about me with the sees of a foreigner, and not just any foreigner, but that particular type of entitled and unsympathetic American who so annoyed me when I encountered him in the classrooms and workplaces of your country's elite. This realization angered me; staring at my reflection in the speckled glass of my bathroom mirror I resolved to exorcise the unwelcome sensibility by which I had become possessed (p. 124).

This novel is the story of a highly intelligent, emotionally sensitive young man, a New York financial analyst, who has a life-changing realization while on an assignment in Chile (where, as I recall, they had their own 9/11 in 1973). The realization--or epiphany or moment of truth which the young man comes to--reaches him for many reasons as it could in anyone's life. But this young Pakistani man--top of his Princeton University class--found his ideal employment with an American company, and he fit right in. His college life, followed quickly by the right job, was the fulfillment of a dream. Simple it seems, but you must read this novel to get the nuances, the buildup of tension. It's not sound-bite reading for those who cherry-pick literary fiction. Of course, if the setting is a cafe in Lahore, Pakistan, then you can guess that the young man, the narrator named Changez, lost his job. But "how" he lost his job is the American story. In many ways 9/11/01 is a "pretext" for this novel because this story could have happened at any time in recent world history; the story of failed dreams has been told by Thomas Hardy, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many more novelists.

The Pakistani narrator is such a sensitive person that it's difficult not to think of him as also being the author, Mohsin Hamid. I feel that to write this novel a person has to have lived it. His sensitivity to the amount of flesh American women expose is profoundly touching as is his anguish over the fate of his family in Pakistan.

Regarding the craft of writing: Every scene is turned gently. The fine points and nuances are so clearly realized. There are moments of pointed irony in this novel that make it truly stunning. If the American reader cannot read irony, then we are indeed a lost civilization; if we can't detect irony than it means our attention span is so short that we can't trace an idea over time and space. One example would be the financial corporation's motto, "Focus on the fundamentals," and how the notion of fundamentals resonates from the book's title through all the interpretations of what "fundamental" can mean and to whom.

Also, after this novel, no teacher of writing can tell his or her students to "show the reader, don't tell" for, with this novel, telling is showing. What hurts most poignantly--for me--about Hamid's novel is the horrible truth I experienced when I realized that my fellow American, a soldier, could sit at a cafe table, ostensibly listening to the soul-searching of a sensitive, well-meaning young man and not feel anything. That is the final implication: that there are people who feel nothing even when a well-spoken person bares the core of his life, and braves fear and paranoia to tell it so well.

This is the ultimate "the philosophy of East versus West" novel and although I was disturbed and, at times, resentful of the portrait of America and Americans as portrayed by the narrator of this tale, I was also enthralled and unable to stop reading.

The story is related in the form of a monologue between the chronicler, Changez, and an anonymous American stranger who he meets quite by chance in a café in Pakistan. His tale commences as he leaves his homeland to pursue an education at Princeton (an opportunity few Americans can afford) and after graduation is hired by a prestigious New York company at a very generous starting salary. He is at first enamored with the American lifestyle, but after 9/11 discovers a feeling of kinship with the perpetrators while becoming more and more critical of his host country.

Author Hamid uses his creation, Changez, to do a bit of finger wagging by having Changez espouses the belief that the U.S. "interferes in the affairs of other countries" while on the other he laments the U.S. résistance to "interfere" in the growing tensions between Pakistan and India. (reminiscent of a teenager who comes to you for financial help but is annoyed when you attempt to provide some guidance to prevent a repeat of their financial woes and who, after accepting your cash, tells you to "stop interfering in their lives".)

Changez observation that America is "giving itself over to dangerous nostalgia" is replayed for the reader in his allegorical retelling of his relationship with Erica, an AmERICAn woman who he loves but who is so resistant to letting go of her memories of her deceased lover that she is unable to accept Changez (changes???) and is ultimately destroyed because of her obsessive love of the past.

I will admit that Hamid is an extraordinary writer whose ability to draw you into the story and hold your attention is undeniable. The subject matter being served in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, however, may not be a dish easily digested nor may it be suitable for every readers' palate. Taste and see for yourself.

The urge to tell one's life story to a complete stranger is not unusual... although this one is on several levels. Changez, a young Pakistani, expounds on his experiences during his years living in the United States in greater and more intimate detail than one would expect (or be interested in as a listener). His monologue addresses an undefined American, maybe visitor maybe something else, to Lahore as they sip tea, eat dinner and watch the sun set, adding a special glow to the grand square... In between conveying the chapters of his story Changez, sensing an increasing unease in his counterpart, attempts to put his listener at ease: offering to switch tea cups or pre-tasting the food to prove no ill-will on the part of the waiter or anybody else.

Changez - I cannot get away from the `change-ling' association of his name - was an ambitious and evidently successful academic immigrant to the US. Maybe, his success at Princeton and in a top consulting company has been a bit too easy to be believable. He plays the role of the young executive with great style, always fitting in, until the events of 9/11 provoke him into reflections and doubts that will eventually lead him back to Lahore. During his time in New York, he is infatuated by a beautiful blond intelligent woman. He courts her gently and respectfully and takes the role of her confidante. Realistic? I am not sure, but Changez eventually is carried away by his emotions resulting in expected as well as unexpected outcomes.

Mohsin Hamid writes this monologue in a fluid, often beautiful and easygoing style. Much more substance is hinted at than provided, leaving the reader with time and space for reflection on the attitudes of immigrants such as Changez attempting to fit in. Probably the most interesting aspect of the novel is the perspective from the outside looking in on American society and its values. (Friederike Knabe)

One of the unsettling things about Hamid's tense, terse novel is the quiet manner in which its elements--the deliberately provocative nature of its title, the manner of its telling, the ambiguous motivations of its characters--challenge the reader's own presuppositions. "You should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists," its narrator chides, even as he coyly hints that his intellectual and emotional rebellion against the United States may have more menacing ramifications. Does fundamentalism refer to his Islamic heritage or to the "fundamentals" of Western-style capitalism? Was he reluctant to return to his native country, or was he a reluctant ingenue of American business? Who is more dangerous, this Pakistani narrator recounting the story of his Princeton schooling and his rise and fall at an American firm, or the quiet American listener, whose presence in the cafe in Lahore may be more than mere happenstance?

Changez, the young man whose monologue recounts his American adventure, had it all: graduating at the top of his class, snapped up by a prestigious firm, and thrilled by his relationship with Erica, an attractive Manhattan socialite. He adopts the professionalism--and, more hesitantly, the arrogance--of his colleagues, but underneath his facade is a "sort of Third World sensibility." Then, 9/11 changes Changez, who in turns notices changes (both real and perceived) in the attitudes of Americans towards immigrants like himself. Even a two-week-old beard ("perhaps, a form of protest on my part") becomes a matter for mutual hostility and suspicion. The deterioration of Changez's relationship with his adopted country parallels the worsening emotional state of his girlfriend: While America reverts to an insular longing for a past grandness, Erica retreats into her undiminished love for a dead man, her former boyfriend.

The America/Erica equivalence is, perhaps, too unsubtle; it's an instance of heavy-handedness in a mostly understated novel calculated to explore, but not explain, the world's love-hate relationship with the U.S. One of America's biggest faults, as Hamid would have it, is the retreat "into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority." The story of its narrator, himself a man torn between two cultures (and hardly a paragon of faultlessness), forces us to rethink those myths and assumptions.

I was actually assigned this novel in my modern Middle Eastern history course, apparently as a fictional reflection of Muslim-Western relations in the aftermath of 9/11. The novel is in the form of a first person narrative, the protagonist being a Pakistani man named Changez. As they sit in a cafe in Lahore, Changez recounts his experiences of living in America to an unknown American. Those experiences consist chiefly of attending Princeton, attaining a position at an elite American firm, and falling in love with a beautiful yet troubled American girl. Changez was living the American dream, or so he thought, until 9/11, the day when everything changed. The attacks caused not only societal tension between Islam and the West, but a deep identity crisis within Changez himself.

On a superficial level, it might seem that this is an anti-American book. Changez obviously becomes embittered with America, and tends to romanticize his native Pakistan in comparison. But I think the author is portraying a more nuanced message, and Changez simply gives voice to the "other side" that many in the West fail to understand. In fact, the book seems to point to a deep misunderstanding between the Islamic world and the West, one in which both sides have become victims of fear and suspicion, thus feeding the cycle of animosity. I would normally refrain from my next comment (for fear of giving too much away), but the author himself says in the the store review that this is a story about nostalgia, and the damaging effect it can have when embraced too tightly.

The writing is eloquent and compelling, and I would definitely classify this as a page turner. I can't quite bring myself to call it a home run, but it is quite an intriguing read that provoked some serious thought. That being said, I did feel it was a bit vague and confusing upon reading it, and only with reading the author's interview did I feel I fully comprehended what it was trying to say. For whatever that is worth.

There are at least two stories contained in this short but thoroughly absorbing book. One we have heard before: the young man (or woman in the case of THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA) who gets a head start in the American corporate rat race and succeeds brilliantly before having second thoughts about what it is all worth. The second story connects this specifically to the events of 9/11/2001, raising various questions of nationality, culture, and morality.

Changez is a Princeton scholarship student from a once-wealthy Pakistani family who gets recruited by an elite Manhattan business valuation firm, rising quickly to become one of their top analysts. He also meets Erica, a fellow Princetonian and daughter of New York society parents. Simple though it is, his story would interesting even without the racial overtones. It is always fun to read about bright young people rising to the top, and his relationship with the troubled Erica (a scenario a little reminiscent of Murakami's NORWEGIAN WOOD) has layers of feeling that Moshin Hamid treats with subtle sensitivity -- a subtlety that he also shows in the delicacy of his suggestion that Changez may be more than just another junior employee in the eyes of his gay boss.

Reading the back of the book, one might assume that Changez' life changes suddenly after 9/11, when he suddenly finds himself perceived as an alien. That aspect is there, certainly, but in fact Changez prospers even more in both his business and romantic life after the attacks. It is his inner attitude that changes. Again, Hamid is subtle in portraying an America that recasts itself in the replay of a national myth, seeing the widespread efflorescence of patriotism as cover for the assertion of national privilege. As a foreigner myself, I find he has perfectly captured the disturbing changes that took place in the fabric of this country, without taking the easy route of blaming them on a particular administration. He is also very brave in describing the unexpectedly confused feelings that surely most of us had at the sight of the Twin Towers falling. What is most interesting is that Changez does not respond primarily as a Pakistani or a Moslem -- the title is deliberately misleading -- but as a socially responsible human being.

All this is encased in yet another story. Back in his native Lahore, Changez opens a conversation with an American visitor to his country, recounting the story of his American experience as he entertains him over tea and then dinner. It gives the book a curiously artificial air, as though one is being addressed by an exceedingly polite waiter, but there is also something almost creepy about it. Gradually, you realize what Hamid is doing. By turning the tables in this way, he makes the American (and by extension the reader) experience what it is like to be an object of suspicion in a foreign land, an unease that starts imperceptibly but tightens alarmingly as the novel nears its intense but ambiguous climax.

The entire novel took me about two hours to read, making it easy to swallow. The engaging style of a confession narrative makes it both sympathetic and terrifying. I wish I could see more of the fundamentalist rather than the reluctance here because it appears this fundamentalist is less convicted than others.

Issues of political concern over the role of the US in policing the rest of the world are raised, but not fully explored.

What this book does well is to show that someone from Pakistan with a beard need not be an automatic anti-American, religious fundamentalist.

It is almost as revealing to read some of the commentary on "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" as to have read the brief novel by Mohsin Hamid and while attempting to discount or even ignore some of the more ethnocentric responses, I think the variety of interpretations points to a book that can be read on many different levels. In fact, all books involve a process of translation, even those in a language with which we feel fluent. We read a book differently based on how we are responding to life & what we know about the setting of the novel at a given moment. Often rereading a book after a number of years becomes akin to reading it for the 1st time. I found this to be true when rereading "The Great Gatsby" after a period of many years since the initial reading, feeling that the book had been somehow rewritten, ignoring for the moment that it was I who had changed and not F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel.

For me, at its core, the Mohsin Hamid novel deals with the process of developing one's identity, causing other things in the novel to become almost incidental, at least at times. To criticize someone for not being fully mature at age 22, of not having done a better job of assimiliating two very different cultures, of having seemed to reject America or the blessings of a Princeton education is to miss a great deal that is important within the book, at least in my opinion. Changez is a man in flux & given the circumstances of his life, attempting to straddle two countries while not forsaking one in favor or the other, is never easy. In fact, he reminded me of an early novel by Saul Bellow, "Dangling Man", whose main character of about the same age as Changez is also caught up in a crisis of identity, allowing himself to be drafted into the U.S. Army because he is no longer able to deal with the complex variables of his life. Such things do happen and particularly at the age of Changez in the Hamid story.

With all of the blessings that come with life in America, being allowed to come to this country, whether from Pakistan, Jamaica or Burkina Faso, is like winning the lottery, at least as viewed by many in the rest of the world. And many who win the lottery find it an experience more difficult to deal with than ever imagined, almost like needing to enter a witness protection program, taking on an altered identity because their former identity is suddenly in dynamic transition. Having lived abroad in a Third World country for a few years in the 1960s, at a time when the U.S. was experiencing dramatic changes, I can attest to how one's identity gradually shifts to take on characteristics of the place where one is living at that time. This is not to become anti-American but to begin to see the rest of the world through a very different lens. Hence, I think Changez can abhor the death & devastation that came with the attacks on the Twin Towers and elsewhere in America while at the same time experiencing at least a slight feeling that some of the arrogance he perceives in the way the U.S. occasionally deals with the rest of the world has been responded to. The people of other countries can and do in fact both revere and feel intimidated by the United States and these countering emotions do not cancel each other out.

It seemed that Erica is going through a crisis of identity as well as Changez, as her identity was so rooted to her lifelong friend, the recently deceased Chris. Meanwhile, Changez seems to define himself in some ways by his experience of Erica, a relationship that can can never be more than an incomplete one. Erica vanishes without a trace, with not even a farewell note, even leaving her discarded clothes behind and I think that is important to the story in an odd sort of way, leaving what ultimately becomes of both somewhat obscure. Having mentioned the author Fitzgerald, it is almost reminiscent of Jay Gatsby's having longed to tie his consciousness to Daisy Buchanan, a seemingly romantic but rather incomplete & underdeveloped vision of his ideal woman. For the erstwhile Mr. Gatz, Daisy seemed almost as unknowable as Erica did to Changez.

Changez may appear reluctant but he is not a fundamentalist in either a religious or a political sense of the word. If anything, he is secular & apolitical but I think remains open to the world at large, not being ready to cast himself in stone at the age of 22. Hamid's book is not a great novel but it is a good one, a book that provokes one to ask more questions rather than to provide stock answers. For many of us, this is the reason we travel and one of the reasons we read.

I found this book to be much more enjoyable than I thought it would be. The concept was a little difficult at first for me to grasp: a young man, Changez, imposes himself upon an American in a Pakistani cafe, and spends the afternoon/evening in a conversation in which he speaks of how his life has come full circle, from Pakistan to America and back.

Although most seem to pick up hate against the US, I concentrated more on Changez's story and tried to place myself in his shoes. It was interesting to see how he perceived events in his life and he chose to interpret those events in his surroundings. This book gave me much to think on and about.

While I feel the book was good, I think the writing could be improved on, so the reason I gave it 4 stars and not 5. I enjoyed the book, but it's not something a lot of people can read easily.

Hamid's novel is in many respects reminiscent of Lolita, 50th Anniversary Edition - the narrator is engaged in a conversation with the reader over a meal in Lahore. As the story progresses, the narrator, Changez, details his life in America in which he lives the "American Dream" - admittance to Princeton, landing a very well-paying job with a prestigous and selective finance firm in which he is successful. He falls in love with an American girl , Erica, from the Upper East side - life couldn't be better. And then there were the September 11th attacks, which change not only New York and America, but also Changez's relationships - with Erica, with his firm, with the United States.

As Changez describes it, the change is gradual - as Hamid writes it, "I had always thought of America as a nation that looked forward; for the first time I was struck by its determination to look *back*. Living in New York was suddenly like living in a film about the Second World War; I, a foreigner, found myself staring out at a set that ought to be viewed not in Technicolor but in grainy black and white." It was not only the United States that changed, but Changez himself. The consequences of the changes are tragic for all characters concerned, the similarities to Lolita continue, as one begins to wonder how reliable a narrator Changez is, and what precisely the nature of the American with whom Changez is speaking becomes more sinister.

It is a marvelous story, and it is brilliantly written. Hamid provides perspective on America before and after September 11 through the eyes of a Pakistani, as well as a sense of who Pakistanis are in the midst of larger geo-political events. Thought-provoking with an open-ended conclusion, it is easily the best book I've read this year. Highest recommendations.

Hamid's "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" is a very well written account of a Princeton educated Pakistani man named Changez who encounters an unnamed American man in a cafe in Lahore. Engaging him in conversation, Changez tells us his story, a story of a Western thinking man from a Muslim country, who is a product of his times.

Changez wants a piece of the American dream, and he gets a large piece of it - good education, great job, an upper class girlfriend. That all changes with 9/11, and the paranoia that came with it. With the changing attitudes of the American people come the changing characteristics of those who are suddenly on the defensive, much like the Japanese Americans during WWII. Not understanding this ultimately racial paranoia, the Muslim Americans of the Middle eastern origins start fighting for survival and preservation, in the only way left to them - fundamentalism. This fundamentalism is reluctant, as it depends on the accusations and persecutions from other parties.

Hamid's novel is very engaging and can be read in one sitting. Though a slim work, physically, it delivers a punch and keeps the reader thinking and contemplating - how many friends do we lose through imagining enemies? Highly recommended.

This is an interesting little novel about an educated Pakistani who studies at Princeton and lands a job in a lucrative management consultancy in New York. The story is told as a recollection from a Lahore cafe at dusk.

The small boned structure of the novel gives voice to a number of contemporary themes concerning the plight of clever Pakistanis who seem to embrace the American Dream but fall out of love with their adopted country in the post September 11 malestrom. The story is thickly slathered in allegory - Erica, the wealthy New York girl, unattainable as she grieves for her deceased childhood boyfriend, represents the glittering allure of the New World. She toys with Changez, the protagonist, in a manner that brings to mind the ill fated Syyid Qutb and his experience of dance hall America in the 1960s - experiences that were in many ways the forerunner of the contemporary crisis of modern Islamic masculinity. The mix of lust and frustrated difference enforced by pretty, wealthy, miss American youth on sexually charged young men from the Middle East.

The plot is nicely paced with enough tension to hold the reader's attention, though the style is a little too finely honed to generate the heat such themes require.

A fine little novel, attempting to mine a rich seam of contemporary political crisis. Though perhaps it will come to be seen as more of a stalking horse for greater novels yet to come on these subjects.

This is a good and interesting novel but it's been wildly over-praised having won or been nominated for several major prizes. To begin, the title is misleading. The narrator and protagonist, Changez--I have no idea how to pronounce that, like French changez? or hard g?--is not a "fundamentalist" in any possible sense of that word. Religion is perhaps mentioned twice when he notes that Pakistan and Afghanistan share a border and a religion, Islam. But he isn't at all interested in religion, nor could he by any stretch of the imagination be called a political "fundamentalist." Slowly, perhaps but not necessarily "reluctantly" he yields to his strong perceptions of how much damage America does in his part of the world and also elsewhere. The progression of his thought on these matters is well-done but there's not a particularly original insight anywhere.

Reviewers have praised Changez's "voice." But that's silly. It's a fine first-person monologue but there's nothing special about the writing. The convention employed by the author, that Changez is telling his story to a foreigner--probably an American-over tea, then dinner, then on a walk back to the foreigner's hotel is purely a convention: it's not in the least plausible that anyone would listen to this talk which, if we were to consider it realistically, would probably consume a great many hours.

The other strand of the story, the narrator's infatuation with a woman who is irrevocably tied to a lover who has died, is somewhat interesting, but it doesn't relate in any way to what is presumably the main thread of the story, the narrator's "reluctant" turn to something that isn't at all "fundamentalist."

This is a solid piece of work, worth one's time. But it is hardly the major work it's been touted to be.

What a clever and powerful book.

Beautifully written in First Person Narrative by only one character throughout the book. In my opinion, it would not have been quite such a powerful book written any other way.

The voice of Changez seemed very real and showed his Pakistani/English accent very well.

I am not normally a fan of books that leave the ending open to your own interpretation but this is the one exception. I would have been disappointed if the ending had been more resolved. The book group discussion of the ending showed me even more how clever the writer is as each person in the group had a slightly different view of how the story went.

Despite being a short book, by using certain widely held stereotypes, the author managed to make the characters very easy to visualise and even to understand (whether you agree with them or not you can understand where they are coming from on both sides of the story). It certainly gave me some food for thought and some understanding of the world situation at that time.

Read it for the second time for Book Group and it just gets better as I notice even more detail that I did not pick up on during my first read many years ago.

Definitely one that has made my "everyone should read this book" list.

Hamid delivers haunting conflict in the narrator with near-perfect precision. He has obviously structured the narrative with the utmost care. I found, however, Changez's addressal of the unseen, unheard, unnamed American character annoying, affected--a thinly veiled lesson that, while evoking powerful questions in me as I read, mostly annoyed. Much of the plot I found predictable, but Hamid's mastery of craftedness is evident and often times beautiful, if not in the prose and plot, then in the entrancing, intimidatingly real mind he presents in Changez and in the arc of Changez's metamorphosis.

Check out my full-length book reviews at LitBeetle.com!

Skillfully written and a fascinating read. The point of view is first person narrative as told by the main character Changez, a Pakistani. Changez has spent 4+ years living in the U.S, attending Princeton University then finally getting a job in N.Y. at a management consulting firm (the letters of whose name also are U.S.) He chances upon an American on the street and invites him to sit down in an outdoor cafe to have some tea. There he spends several hours talking to the American while the two of them share tea and then a meal in an outdoor market place in Lahore. We never find out the American's name or occupation nor why he is there in Pakistan. He is dressed rather formally and seems to have a bulge under his suit jacket (a gun?)
We also do not hear any of the words spoken by the American man but his reactions, questions and answers are revealed by the narrator.
(Paraphrased)
Changez: "I went to university in New Jersey."
(pause)
Changez: "Why yes you have guessed that it was Princeton"
(pause)
Changez: "Oh yes, I liked it very much."

It is a very unique method of telling a written story.
From the conversation we see that Changez, at first, loves his new life in the U.S. feeling fortunate to be a part of such a modern and progressive and forward thinking world. A world where nearly anyone can be successful. He even has the fortune of falling in love with a beautiful American woman. He seems happy. His job takes him around the world, where he is proud to be mistaken as an American.

Then while away on a trip in Manila he is watching the TV as a plane flies into the Twin Towers on 9/11. Returning to N.Y. he begins to notice that Americans, who have previously admired and befriended him, begin to act suspicious of him. He notes that the citizens of New York begin to rally around their flag. He feels like an outsider. Reluctantly he returns to his home in Pakistan to teach at a university there, getting involved in a nationalistic group.
I'll leave the rest and fill-in details for you to read.
Never is religion nor God nor spiritualism mentioned in Changez's conversation with the American. The character in this story professes no religious fervor. Because of this I don't think this is about religious fundamentalism. I believe the "fundamentalism" here is about ideological belief in an established set of basic principles regarding modern political and social mores. Maybe Changez has been analyzing the "Fundamentals" of America's value systems by studying her 'assets and liabilities' and how they pertain to him after 9/11 and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. That's just my guess. Perhaps the author can enlighten?

This is a story of both an internal and external culture clash between Pakistan and America. Why do the people of the Middle East feel the way they do toward the U.S? What exactly is the "War on Terror?" These are things to think about.
There is also a suspenseful undercurrent and clash of the "relationship" between Changez and the American with whom he shares his meal. Who will win that struggle?
Fast read. I listened to an audible version. The length of the book is the length of the conversation. It happens in real time. I read it in one sitting.

This was the first book I read by Mohsin Hamid, and I was not disappointed. I tend to have a rather short attention span, and it only took me about a day to read this book. Hamid has an extremely unique way of telling a story that makes it impossible to put down his book.

This book is basically a conversation that takes place in a cafe in Lahore, Pakistan between a Pakistani man, Changez, and an American visitor. Changez relates his story as an immigrant in America, from his rise to the top to the tragedy of 9/11 and its effect on his position. The man lays out his life, opinions, and relationships to the American. It is written as if you are the American visitor and Changez is speaking directly to you. I can see how easy it would be for many authors to go wrong with this style, but Hamid does it beautifully; it is simply captivating.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is full of symbolism, wisdom, honesty, and passion. If you are uncertain of whether you should read this book - do it. You will not be disappointed.

This is an excellent novel about Changez, a Pakistani man who earns his way through an Ivy League school at the side of his more privileged American counterparts. He meets Erica, an American girl that is overwhelmed with her own demons of a betrothed and his untimely death. Changez gains a highly sought after position with a prestigious firm in NYC. He is becoming the "American Dream" during the attacks on the World Trade Towers of September 11, 2001. This is a pivotal point in the book as he realizes that he is quickly becoming that which he has always disliked in the American attitude, while at the same time becoming enemy #1 in the eyes of frightened Americans.

This book sheds light of what it might mean to be to be discriminated against in the new anti-muslim sentiment that runs rampant in our country. It points out some character flaws of America that too many refuse to acknowledge.

Changez "relationship" with America has to come to a close as he tried to love her, but in the end, had to leave her.

First some caveats. From its cleverly misleading title to its ambiguous ending, this post-9/11 novella promises somewhat more than it delivers. Written as a long ancient mariner-like monologue, it tells a story of a journey from Pakistan to America and then back again. In its attempt to blend the personal with the political, it chooses a curious angle by dwelling at length on the subject of nostalgia. A wealthy, attractive young American woman falls victim to a kind of unredeemable mourning for a dead lover, while the Pakistani protagonist and narrator falls into a similar emotional quagmire when she is unable to return his growing love for her. Meanwhile, he understands the reaction of the U.S. to the 9/11 attacks as a kind of nostalgia for a past that no longer exists while riding roughshod in its bruising retaliations on the rest of the world. Juggling an identity in America as an outsider (a Muslim, impoverished by comparison with his fellow students at Princeton), he is mentored, in the high-powered New York consulting firm that hires him, by another self-identifed "outsider," who eventually gives a glimpse into his personal life that openly hints at other reasons to account for his feelings of otherness.

In interviews, Hamid has said the book is about his ambivalence toward America (love-hate is probably too strong a term for it), but what the book has to say about that is not terribly new or original. Only a reader steadfastly untuned to the rest of the world over the last decade would be surprised by what he has to say about American arrogance and indifference to those who stand in the way of its ambitions and self-interest. Likewise, his decision to leave a lucrative but soulless job will seem rather predictable. And while there's a bit of suspense in the ambiguity of the narrator's intentions (is he benign or malicious?), this element of plot seems grafted on sometimes as a device to maintain the interest of readers unabsorbed by the author's ideas. Well written and thought provoking, the book has its rewarding moments, nonetheless, and deserves a reading.

The title of this book is an eye-grabber. When I saw it on the table at my local bookstore, I knew I was eventually going to read it. When friends of mine raved about this book, and I saw it reduced on the store, I finally got it. All-in-all, a pretty so-so story.

On the plus side, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an easy story to digest; there's a subtle, lightweight element of thriller to it which you see from the beginning, and comes to the fore in the last 30 pages; the characters don't play to stereotypes.

Unfortunately we never really get inside the narrator's head to understand what "fundamentalist" means for the main character. The narrator had every advantage America offers self-starters, yet he inexplicably delights in the 9/11 attacks, and develops hatred towards the country because of the attacks on Afghanistan. The rationale offered for his beliefs are vague and thin. I never see the issue from the narrator's point of view, nor do I recoil at his behavior.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist looked good on the shelf, but didn't deliver.

I enjoy the writting style a lot. But more than this I really appreciated the parallel between his love for the girl and his love for America. Both the girl and his first vision of America as a great place of equality and opportunity fade away and then disappear completely. As someone who loves history I find it very unsettling the extent to which most people in the US have no idea why anyone in the rest of the world would dislike our foreign policy... because most Americans have so little idea what it is or what it does to other human beings. I don't like the way the US media and politicians make anyone in the world who disagrees with our self-interest a "dangerous and bad person." I love the ability shown here to gently flesh-out someone who disagrees with US policy and show him as nothing more than a kindred human being who shares exactly our own concern for our family and our loved ones.

I saw strong parallels between this book and Greene's "The Quiet American." Greene's book has done so much to explain the underlying forces behind the American folly in South East Asia of 40 years ago; Hamid's book looks at those forces today which are driving the current American folly in South West Asia. There are the same Ivy League educated elite that are blind to the reality of the world outside their privilege; the same CIA operatives devoted to changing the world into America's likeness. In Greene's case, he used a British character named Fowler to serve as a foil to the CIA operative, Pyle. Fowler eventually decided that he must act to stop Pyle's "agenda." Hamid incorporates this essential conflict into his character, the suitably named Changez, who is transformed from one who believes in those Ivy League economic globalization values, and is an active player in their dissemination, to those of Fowler, who decides that something must be done to stop this juggernaut. Most suitably for a book with heavy overtones of the CIA's involvement in other countries, Changez's change in outlook occurs in Chile, and it is a book seller there, Juan-Bautista, who is the catalyst to this change. I'd love to ask Hamid if he was specifically inspired by Greene, has ever read him, or if all of this is mere coincidence since both Greene and Hamid are describing the same imperial reach.

For Americans it is not a flattering description. Greene was banned for a number of years from entering the United States - the immigration authorities never stated a reason, but "The Quiet American" could be a leading contender. A number of reviewers of this book clearly wish to dismiss Hamid's insights. He skillfully interweaves them into his narrative, for example: "What your fellow countrymen longed for was unclear to me - a time of unquestioned dominance? Of safety? Of moral certainty?" (p115) or "... much like the short news items on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, which I had recently begun to read. But his tone- with, if you will forgive me, its typically American undercurrent of condescension- struck a negative chord with me..." (p55), or "... the advancement of a small coterie's concept of American interests in the guise of the fight against terrorism, which was defined to refer only to the organized and politically motivated killing of civilians by killers not wearing the uniforms of soldiers." (p.178).

Hamid's book is an essential read for these rich nuggets of observations. It is a vital read for all Americans, particularly those who yearn for that "unquestioned dominance" of the rest of the world. There are much less exhausting, and more sustainable alternatives.

A story that every American would find worth reading for a better understanding how people from other countries perceive our government, society and core culture. And a reading that will challenge and may change Americans' perceptions of what they believe America to be and the psyche of its people.

America is the richest and the most powerful country in the world. It also has tremendous control over world trade and media as a result of which millions of people around the world get a glimpse of life in America even if they have never crossed the border of their own cities/towns/villages. People - particularly from developing countries - want to be in America in order to make it big and lead comfortable lives.
It is therefore quite surprising that there is considerable resentment among people around the world towards America. It, in many cases, originates from radical ideas. Traditionally, the adopters of these radical ideas are found in religious schools (madrassas) in poor regions around the world.
But, in the last few years, this ideology has not left unscathed even the educated elite in the developed world( Amhad Omar Sheikh being a pretty good example).

The book does not investigate topics like terrorism/wars/religion...etc. Infact, there are no terrorists in the book at all.
However, it does make an attempt to delve deeply into how events (like 9/11) tend to impact our thought process. This process changes normal people leading normal lives into fundamentalists. And sometimes, it also makes people deeply and unreasonably suspicious of people from other ethnicities.

The leading protagonist(Changez) is a young man who has come to America with ambitions not unlike many other South Asians. He belongs to a family that is well-respected in Lahore. However, because of the political and economic situation in Pakistan, their wealth and position has been in constant decline over the years.
Changez, not lacking ambition, completes his studies with zeal and gets the job of his dreams.

Belonging to a family that has lost its wealth, but not position in society, he is a proud man and does not want to be looked down upon by his peers.
Therefore, while in college, he constructs a false facade of being rich by hiding the fact that he has to work extra jobs in order to make ends meet.
He even uses an advance salary from him new job to pay for his vacation in Greece with other Princetonians.
When encountered by an elderly doorman during a visit to his girlfriend's (Erica) house who looked disapprovingly at his ethnic attire, he speaks to him haughtily to put him back at his place. Though, according to his own admissions, his country has had little achievements in modern times, he takes a great deal of pride in his ancestry and the historical accomplishments of his country. Perhaps, for this reason, it hurts him a lot when people mention the economic and social problems that plague Pakistan.

While in new York, Changez is exceedingly successful professionally and also finds an undestanding mentor in Jim and a good friend in Wainwright. The cosmopolitan nature and the diversity of the city allow him to feel like a New Yorker within a few weeks of being there.
However, Sep-11 and the events after it change everything. He is often viewed with suspicion.
Changez, because of these events and the turmoil in his relationship with Erica, loses his ability to 'focus on the fundamentals' and begins to interpret events around him with ever-increasing influence of his hatred towards American policies. Infact, he views Sep-11 more as a destruction of American arrogance than American lives and therefore feels absolutely no grief at its occurrence. When travelling to Chile on a business trip, he is told the story of Janissaries by the head of the firm that he was valuating. The story was told in a business context and but was interpreted by Changez in a poilitical context.

The stranger from America could be any American and considering the sizeable South Asian population in America, that place could very well have been in America. The behaviour of the stranger is representative of the uneasiness that Americans have begun to feel with people from other ethnicities (especially Muslims) and how unreasonably suspicious they can become.

The book is an interesting read but somehow it failed to meet my expectations which were quite high ever since I learnt that it has been made into a movie by Mira Nair. But, I am not a great reader of books. Perhaps, I missed something here.

What a waste of a book that could have been really powerful! I went back and read the critical reviews and all I can say is that the critics had to have been motivated by a sense of political correctness (a misplaced "such voices - exotic? diverse? multi-cultural? anti-american? - must be heard") in reviewing this insipid, uninspiring and ultimately (and this is THE big sin in my book) boring story.

But let's put political correctness aside. After all that's not what we are (at least I am not) looking for in reading other people's stories; instead I hope discover a little bit more about life's universal truths or something that resembles them when I put aside an evening to read such a well-reviewed book. Re. the politics: the politics of blaming America for 9/11 and justifying Islamic terrorism is palpable just below the surface (protagonist feels happy when twin towers come down!) and it is annoying BUT I am completely comfortable with even that assumption as long as the writer can draw me into a compelling narrative with a protagonist who has something convincingly righteous (in his own mind) and/or true to tell us. None of this happens.

The other annoying issue is the use of the device where the main protagonist tells this story (all past tense) to a visiting American in Pakistan post 9/11. The device is annoying because of how the story unfolds; additionally the tone that the author uses for the protagonist is one of a cheap tout or local tour guide which is simply incorrect and misplaced. No Pakistani from a well-placed family like the protagonist's, educated at Princeton, worked at a top NY financial services firm would talk/behave in this manner with a visiting American. I doubt if American readers will pick up on this false note but it was jarring for me (I am from India and do have a good sense for how such story-telling might play out).

Finally the story is uninspiring because the protagonist is torn, confused, misguided by a sense of guilt and a feeling of being an outsider and never quite resolves or understands any of it. The only distraction is that he manages to fall in love with a white American woman -- but she in turn is in love with a dead man (yes ironical, cruelly beautiful but finally uninteresting); even their single sex scene evokes only pity. All of this might also have been fine except that there is never any kind of insight or redemption or even a glimmer of hope that the protagonist is on some sort of a journey. Life's-a-bitch-and-then-you-die is the easiest kind of story to write. Perhaps it is interesting to some people. But for me it's primarily lazy, insufferable and boring.

This was an interesting & well written story, but it left me feeling quite conflicted. There were some significant things that disturbed me, starting with the protagonist's tendency to blame everything bad that happened to his home country (Pakistan) on the United States. This is such an overreaching attitude, particular considering that conflict in the Middle East has existed as long as the Middle East itself, and blaming the US for the aggressions shown by various ME countries toward others is a convenient and currently popular sentiment, but not grounded in the realities of the relationships between the ME countries themselves.

What was perhaps the most disturbing issue for me was Changez's reaction of pleasure at the attacks against the US on September 11. This troubled me throughout the rest of the book, especially as the antagonistic feelings he had toward the US intensified, even as he was taking advantage of the opportunities the US had (has) to offer that were not available to him in his own country. I simply do not understand hating a country & what it stands for, but at the same time coveting the opportunities there, and thus doing whatever was necessary to pursue a US education & employment.

Tied into the above is the absence of ethical responsibility Changez ultimately showed toward his employer, an employer who went out on a limb for him on more than one occasion. His "guilt" seemed only to involve letting Jim down (his hiring manager), but not about derailing the project he was working on or leaving the company in a bad position. His attitude had become so negative toward the US that he could not even bring himself to fulfill his employment obligations in a professional & ethical way, even though the US was the country that had afforded him the opportunities.

Finally, the whole premise of the book (a conversation between Changez and an unidentified American) left me with a feeling of being set up. The ending is ambiguous enough - both in content of Changez's monologue and as to what actually did/did not happen with the American - that it left me as the reader feeling as though the author wanted me to assume what happened next, and based on the story & the trajectory of Changez's life, one ending seems much more plausible than another.

So at the end of the reading I am conflicted, because it could have actually been a much better story, even with the anti-US sentiment, if the protagonist had actually had some personal ethics rather than allowing his politics to inform & dictate his actions. I hated that about him, and while the writing was good, my inability to connect on even the smallest level with Changez impacted my overall assessment of the book.

Mohsin Hamid's second novel is more polished in prose and stylistic maturity than his first. Using the retrospective monologue as his narrative medium, Hamid has crafted a post-9/11 reflection of a young Pakistani male torn between his adopted identity in America and his ethnic lineage. However, like the protagonist of his first novel, Moth Smoke, the Reluctant Fundamentalist is also part of the Pakistani elite and must therefore be considered as a minor representation of culture and society in Pakistan. Indeed, even among the expatriate community, the character of Changez, as a debonair management consultant, transformed by workplace woes in New York is highly rarefied.

The smart play on the word "fundamentalist" that Hamid employs compares Wall Street "fundamentals" and "bottom-line" culture with the simplistic linear reasoning of the religious fundamentalists. But here is where we find the most significant missed opportunity of the novel. Absent from the narrative is any cogent reflection of theological underpinnings of fundamentalists cultures, apart from Changez's decision to grow a beard. Perhaps because of Hamid's own secular persuasion, he has conflated anti-imperialist sentiments of many secular Pakistani youth with "fundamentalist culture." However, the absolutist ideologies that radicals such as Muhammad Atta employed were most certainly infused with a contortion of theological logic. Granted that these males were "educated" in the West but the catalyst in their turn to radicalism was not merely anti-imperialist sentiments but rather a vituperative view of other Faiths.

As long as one is not mislead by the cover marketing of the novel and the cursory reviews that consider this a novel of terrorist transformation, readers will find this to be an engaging read of literary value

I hate books where nothing happens and you know nothing is going to happen because that’s supposedly the point. This is one of those. Half-way through, I realized it wasn’t going anywhere. The finale is in the title and, even with that, the reader gets no satisfaction. And the book’s gimmick is annoying: The narrator speaks in first person to someone sitting with him at a cafe as he tells his story, but he literally narrates it: “Ah, I see the waiter is coming with our tea. Yes, he is a big man, I can see why you might feel intimidated.” Anyway, Princeton-educated Pakistani man gets high-powered job in finance and becomes disillusioned as his life falls apart after 9/11. It could've been good but was underwhelming in every way, from its tepid criticisms of American imperialism to its vague, almost nonexistent look at religious motivations for violence, even though those are allegedly the two things that ultimately drive the guy. Or is it really because of a girl? Ugh.

The story of "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" is unique and entertaining in the sense that it offers a viewpoint often left un-embraced in American war-obsessed media. Told from a first-person perspective, the story reveals a Pakistani's short life in America, attending an Ivy League school, working a well-paying job, and suddenly--and quite unconvincingly--turning against the United States on moral grounds after a "hand of God" conversion by a Chilean bookstore owner (who, arguably, used his rhetorical skills solely to save his business, not out of passion for the moral ideals he passed on to the narrator).

The structure of the novel is built around a one-way "conversation" between the Pakistani narrator and an American tourist. This set-up lends itself to animosities toward the narrator, in that only he is given the opportunity to speak, causing all of his commentary to come across as negative assumptions. The narrator is so well-spoken and carefully manipulative with his words that even when he dismisses hostilities with his words there hides an agenda designed to patronize and condescend.

All in all, the narrator is quite unlikable, however the story is redeeming considering the rare viewpoint from which it is told.

Hamid has a remarkable gift. His writing is concise, gripping, and intriguing. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an impressive work unto itself due to Hamid's narrowly confining himself to a very limited structure. I have read several books that try so hard to be clever in their construction and all but a few of them fall flatly. This book however still manages to sing and hits every note that Hamid aims for with a solid strike.

The constraints placed on this novel are almost insurmountable. First of all, and most notable, is that Hamid chooses to tell this story as a one sided conversation in the first person. Every word here is spoken aloud from the protagonists point of view. The other side of the conversation is only referred to in response. Secondly, the entire story unfolds at a 'real time' pace. From dusk to early evening over a few drinks and a dinner, a life's history unfolds. These two major blocks that Hamid has chosen to set in his way from the outset do not hinder this story in the least. Instead, the unusual style manages to bring the reader into a place that is as unfamiliar as I think Hamid would like for us to feel about being in Pakistan.

One novella kept coming to mind as I read this story. It was 'Mezzanine' by Baker, a story that unfolds as a person takes a trip up an escalator to a mezzanine. Clever, well done, but not on par with this novel. Also, I kept thinking of all the undergrad English majors who aspire to write a book exactly this well conceived.

Where the Reluctant Fundamentalist falls a little, is not with Hamid's superior writing, but instead with his limited reach plot wise. I felt that his love story was a little on the simple side and I came not to care very much about it. I was looking over and over again to see if Hamid might be using the love story as a greater metaphor, like that his love was the USA rejecting him while not even seeing him. This book is all metaphore in a way, and can be disected to ones contentment on many levels. The only serious problem with the metaphore angle is that if you want something concrete or obvious, you wont find much to nail down that is very satisfying. I was underwhelmed towards the end in the manner that Hamid chose to wrap everything up. The final pages are great, they leave you in the dark and hanging on a 'what just happened?' Soprano's style thread.

I look forwards to many more Hamid books down the road.

"The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mohsin Hamid takes you though the life of a young Pakistani, Changez, who has come to the United States. The story follows this man before and after the tragedy of 9/11 and how it affects Changez's life. In my opinion, this was a good book that I could really relate to being Pakistani.

This story starts in the middle of day in Lahore, Pakistan when Changez notices an American man and starts to tell him his story. The identity of the American remains a mystery thought the book. Changez's story starts in New York where he has just graduated from Princeton and applies for a job at a company called Under Samson. After he gets the job he meets a writer named Erica who he falls in love with. Then on September 11th 2001, the twin towers collapse and in a way so does Changez's life in America. People treat him differently and a lot of his co workers avoid him. Then he finds out that unfortunately, Erica does not love him because she cannot get over her dead ex boyfriend. With his life completely changing in front of his eyes he makes an important decision that greatly affects his life. This book had an amazing writing style where the main character was telling you his story and the time shifted from past to present in each chapter. This book also great insight on how life was like after 9/11. However that being said, this book was often very dry and boring with too much detail in parts that did not need to be highlighted so much.

This book can be categorized in the memoir genre because it is written with that kind of writing style. The targeted age would be adult. I think that personally it would appeal to Pakistani's more because they could relate to the book more, however the book gives enough explanation that it would be easy for other people to follow as well.

First of all, I liked the style of this book, and the references to Lahore and New York, and the way the narrator tells the story in some sort of 'you'-perspective. Also it was interesting to hear of the changes in attitude in New York after 9/11 (I also sort of recognised it, in that when I was with my family on Miami Airport for two hours before we went on to some tiny island, my grandfather -who has a moustache and a skin colour that make him look a bit middle eastern- was controlled a lot more at the security point then the rest of us).
But half way, the story becomes rather confusing. I mean, I could sort of follow the fact that Changez smiled at 9/11 (because I can imagine that to anyone from a coutnry that's feeling rather powerless, it would not -at elast not only- be the deaths of many many people, but simply an attack to the most powerful country in the world, and I can imagine that there are quite some people that resent very powerful countries -especially if they also have big armies and nuclear weapons- and thus, sort of enjoy it when that country gets attacked by something, especially if it's something it can't blast a way in a few days) and although I was very much against it, could also stil get the way he treated Erica.
But what I did not understand, was that when he felt so lost, he did not either quit his job just right away, nor just quit whining and did his job. I mean, I do not understand why he has to dupe his company so much, and why he betrays everyone like that, or even why he returns. Also, he jumped to a lot of conclusions rather fast, without explaining how he got to those, and that made me realise that although he (the narrator) had told me a lot about his life, I nevertheless did not know or understand him at all, and what I did get to know of him, I did not like (even though in the beginning, I had been inclined to like him because of the beautiful English). I think the book would have been better if the author had actually given us a main character with a personality, instead of this boring, rather bleak character who just follows along his own voice and whatever the author had in mind at the moment.
Also, I feel like the author started this book with a plan of what he wanted to tell people, then as he went on to write the story, started to like it and went a wholly different way, and then half-way realised he was getting away from his goal, and thus suddenly made a lot of forced changes happen.
Lastly, I did not understand the ending at all (and at least to me it certainly wasn't 'painfully clear' as the back of the book stated): who is really hunting who? Is the American, who is obviously having a gun, someone who has been sent to capture Chavez, or is it that Chavez and the waiter and so are after the American? Or is it something entirely else? I have no clue to this at all, and I find that very unsatisfying, because when I read a book I'd like to a, understand it when I'm finished and b, for it to have ended by the time I've reached the end.
In short, a beautifully written, but confusing and unsatisfying book.

I'd give this a five for product placement, three for English and one for veracity.

It is well-calculated to appeal to liberals anxious to believe that Pakistan is full of people just like them.

The writing style flows but it is phoney. Someone with Changez' history wouldn't speak in that way. His career change is utterly unmotivated - the love affair is thin and clichéd.

The whole book has virtually no mention of Islam at all. That in itself must make it totally false.

Hmm. I loved the narrator's monologue but I wasn't convinced the narrators interlocuter would want to sit around listening to it. If I was the American, I don't think I would have, especially if his purposes were as shady as is implied. I also wasn't particularly convinced by the narrator's political awakening - and really his change of life is all about politics and justice and nothing to do with religion, so the title is misleading. Nothing in Changez's worldview seems to be about Islam as a religion, simply about Islam as an identity. But then again, as he admits himself, his story may not be true.

However, I very much enjoyed the structure, the narrators voice, the ambiguity of the ending , the very vivid invocation of Lahore, and the latent hint of menace in almost every paragraph. I read it in 2 sittings and was sorry to reach the end

I like many people thought religious fundamentalism when I picked up this book, but it was never once mentioned in the book. Not once was religion mentioned. The fundamentalism is based on the bottom line mentioned when Changez finally had enough. He was being instructed to overlook the people who he originally respected for their hard work and expertise and base his evaluations on the "bottom line". Money mattered, not people. He was attaracted to a woman he could and should not have, lived in a culture that could accept him -- only with limits. This book is a fast read because it is written conversationally written.

Changez, a young Pakistani man, sits in a cafe in Lahore relating his time in the US both before and after September 11. His audience is a rather nervous and unnamed American. This is essentially a novel about identity, about "us" and "them". There is a sense of urgency as the narrator's monologue unfolds - how exactly does he transition to becoming, in his words, an "ex-Janissary"? Who is the American, simply a tourist or someone more shady like an operative? What happens with the strange and touching relationship Changez has with Erica, a lovely but deeply sad young woman? It's so beautifully and powerfully written that I found myself going through many emotions. It is also quite funny in parts and I'd find myself chuckling. I rarely buy books these days (instead making good use of my library) but have now felt compelled to order a used copy from the store. It's one I will definitely read again.

I've held off on my review of "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" for a couple of days...waiting, I suppose, for something to come to me. This book has been so glowingly reviewed, was short-listed for the Booker Prize...and yet? I just...I just didn't get it.

Let me clarify. I get the book, I feel like I understand what happened and what the author was trying to convey...but I guess I just don't get what all the fuss was about. (I feel stupid even writing that, but it's true.)

I like the narrative style, I like the voice of Changez, I like the way the author builds tension throughout the book with veiled references to what brought Changez and his companion together, and I even like the vague ending. It was a pleasant read - and I agreed with many of the post 9/11 observations on America and Americans. But...but...

I read books (now) with a notebook and a pad of Post-Its so that I can make notes and mark passages that I don't want to forget. At the end of this book? I hadn't made one note and there was not one sticky note in my copy of this short novel.

Seriously - I can't tell you how reluctant (sorry, but that's how I feel) I am to write these words. I am sure that I am missing THE THING about this book that everyone else got. I don't feel like I was being lazy while reading it...

Anyway - I guess that's all I can say. I would probably pick up another book by Hamid and I certainly congratulate him on his success but I can't say that "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" will be at the top of any of my lists. Sorry.

Author Mohsin Hamid creates a conversation between a Pakistani, Changez, and an unnamed American as they meet, have tea, dinner and a late night walk in LaHore. Just as the old maxim about telling your life's secrets to strangers on a plane, Changez reveals his innermost thoughts to a stranger. The American, known only through the observations of Hamid, appears uneasy about the location, nightfall, the food and other concerns.

Changez relates to the American from having spent time in the US. His English is very good and Hamid inflects it with just the right vocabulary and grammar to show Changez as a well educated non-native speaker who has absorbed a good bit of US culture. In America he saw unexamined wealth and privilege and noted it in contrast to the declining fortunes of his family and county.

In the US he had a Princeton education and was an on the path to success as an appraiser of corporate valuation. His achievements earn him the full support of a boss who identifies with him because, for different reasons, he is an outsider too. The company sent him to the Philippines where he saw the Twin Towers fall on a hotel TV. In a business trip to Chile a latent consciousness was awakened.

He has a romance. You can see how he is the ideal suitor for Erica, one of the few Princeton women accessible to him. She is his friend by default; US males would expect things she could not deliver. He may know this, but he is young, alone and vulnerable.

This is a beautifully written book. From it you can gather the thoughts and feelings of foreign students and workers in the US. The situations and people are those of life from the American style job interview, to the the romance and to reactions to 9/11. Through Changez's recount of his experiences you can see how the US can be perceived by others.

The title is not related to Islamic fundamentalism, but to Changez's line of work.

I highly recommend this book for its beauty and insight.

A one party conversation with a young Pakistani youth, who sees himself searching for success and then repelled by his role in the American Empire. I'm unsure as to why the book was given this title, as it has little to do with religion. However it does provide insight into what can happen to a young person from the Upper Classes who comes to live and work in the US.

Read it quickly as it flows well and is written elegantly. Didn't quite like the perspective/indirect speech/monologue but definitely appreciated the attempt at something different. It's done intelligently and well, it just didn't appeal to my taste. I thought the love story and account of work etc was good...maybe I would have hoped for more depth regarding his dislike of America, even if he did attempt to explain why...I think a few more examples would have fleshed out the story better to understand his conflict. I'm a US citizen who has lived overseas many years, so I think I know what he means by much of what he says...but I also think many readers who haven't got that experience probably don't. The ending disappointed me a little ....like what is happening with the waiter who followed...I would have preferred more closure

Initially, the form of The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid seems forced. Surely it will restrict what the author can achieve. By the end, however, the form has become a crucial part of the plot. The turnabout then works very well indeed.

Changez has returned to Pakistan from the USA, where he both studied and worked. He is in conversation with a foreign visitor to his country. Apparently they are sitting in a café. The visitor is probably an American but, surprisingly, the conversation is entirely one-sided. Basically, Changez tells his life story, eventually relating in detail the conspiring events that led him to his current preoccupations and status.

He was the child of an upper class family in Lahore. He was a bright thing from the start and when the time was right a place at Princeton beckoned. He excelled and was offered a job with a business consulting group, where he learned much more than merely contemporary jargon. He also fell head over heels in love with an American girl, herself a gifted student with a desire to write. She wanted to tell stories, beginning perhaps with one featuring herself and describing her former boyfriend's struggle with terminal illness. Initially at least she seems newly besotted with her new Pakistani friend, with Changez's unexpected and wholly foreign politeness, good manners and dress sense all creating favourable impressions.

The silent listener absorbs all this without comment as he and Changez await their food in a Lahore restaurant. Everything looks rosy for our graduate and the listening tourist seems to respond to the raconteur's story. The narrator then begins to describe a new era, an era that began on September 11 2001 and the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York. The Reluctant Fundamentalist's tone changes abruptly as the world and the individual's place in it seem to need reinterpretation. As things turn out, Changez returns to Pakistan, where he takes up teaching. And still our listener absorbs the story without response.

The book's denouement is both surprising and satisfying. The form that has seemed to be a handicap suddenly contributes to the experience. We are left with an enigmatic, open ending where surely something will happen. Mohsin Hamid perhaps allows each of us to fill in some blanks.

Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist is quite a short book. It possibly just exceeds the novella form. But in a succinct and sophisticated way it addresses and comments on some complex issues. Its methods are both sympathetic and involving. Its efforts convince the reader without being didactic. It is thus a significant achievement.

In the weeks after 9/11, the American news media obsessed over the question, "Why Do They Hate Us?" I wish I could go back to that time with a case or two of this book. It convincingly portrays a character in love with American power, affluence and style, who nevertheless develops a murderous emnity toward the US.

Hamid depicts the animosity between the west and fundamentalist Islam as a clash of competing nostalgias, each side sinking into its past to escape the psychic trauma of its deteriorating present. This isn't some political screed dressed up as a novel, however. It is a very human tale in which personal relationships serve as allegories of the relations between cultures. When people believe the future they face is not one they can live in, tragedy is inevitable.

The trope of presenting the entire text as one side of a conversation in a Pakistan market is tough to pull off, and Hamid does occasionally have to resort to the "What's that you say?" kind of monologue that feels staged. But the payoff is worth it, as we are forced to interpret both individuals and nations through the perspective of a narrator who doesn't even trust himself and whose friendly banter gradually reveals a treacherous intent.

The criticism that Changez's motivation is insufficiently presented is a mystery to me. Hamid does a very touching job of letting us feel the massive approach-avoidance conflict of being both seduced and repelled by two worlds, and being compelled nevertheless to take sides. And the romantic subplot, heartbreakingly rendered, reminds us that the political is always ultimately personal.

I was more moved by this novel than any I've read in a very long time. I recommend it wholeheartedly, and look forward to Hamid's next novel!

Changez, a Princeton-educated Pakistani, sits at an outdoor café in Lahore, entertaining an unusually buff American (with the chest of a man who "bench-presses regularly, and maxes out well above two-twenty-five") whom he has just met that evening by relating his life story. Changez is the only voice we hear - the mysterious guest's comments and actions are inferred from the narrator's conversational responses. From the start, the American seems edgy and minimally engaged, seldom expressing himself, insisting on sitting, jacket on, with his back to the wall, and receiving oddly regular cell phone messages.

As the evening progresses, we learn about Changez's extraordinary career successes and personal relationship frustrations in the United States. An international student at Princeton, Class of 2001, straight A's, and a starting job at the renowned Wall Street business valuation firm Underwood Samson, the young Pakistani launches into the American Dream. Not terribly subtly, the author allows his narrator to belabor the business concepts of his new position, assessing true value and focusing on fundamentals, terms with all-too-obvious religious meanings. The personal relationship half of the American Dream begins at nearly the same time when he mets a fellow classmate and aspiring novelist named Erica. However, he soon learns that just a year earlier, Erica lost her soulmate, a friend since childhood named Chris, to lung cancer.

The trajectories of Changez's life all point upward as he embarks on his professional life. After a stellar bout in his training class, he shines in his first assignment as well -- a valuation project for a record producer and distributor in the Philippines. His star also continues to rise with Erica, albeit Platonically, despite the nagging presence of Chris's ghost hovering over everything in Erica's worldview. The events of 9/11 cast a pall over New York, but Changez marches on, doing another valuation project for a New Jersey cable company. He barely registers the aftereffects on the American Muslim community while continuing his pursuit of the increasingly distant and troubled Erica, A brief trip home to Pakistan alters the arc of his life, and its effects are compounded by the experiences of his next valuation project, a book publisher in Chile. Changez now sees himself as a janissary, a paid traitor to his own people. He personally deconstructs the Western life he has built for himself, ultimately leading him back to a Pakistani university where he becomes an anti-Western radical leader.

Author Mohsin Hamid adopts a clever narrative voice for this tale, using Changez's eyes and words to convey an ambiguous sense of threat about his American guest. Regretably, however, this ambiguity extends to the narrator himself. Too many of the story's actions feel undermotivated from that voice, up to and including the seeming threat posed by the mysterious American visitor. Rather than Saul on the road to Damascus, Changez's deep conversion seems trite: an airport scene here, a luncheon conversation there. One day a Princetonian Wall Streeter, the next day a radicalized university activist. Even his relationship with Erica and its ultimate resolution comes across as superficial.

Curiously, Changez's fundamentalism appears entirely secular, absent the religious component we have come to associate with both Muslims and Christians. These elements could perhaps be seen as a commentary on a too-easily adopted set of beliefs, reflective of a shallow narrator. Is he really as radical as he thinks, and has his radicalism achieved such levels as to warrant the potential assassination to which he alludes? Or is he just as deluded now as he was on Wall Street? If the narrator is truly so superficial, his tribulations hardly serve the reader as a lesson about the formation of a radical fundamentalist (implied by the book title). In such a setting, the characters' very names begin to feel trite, a bit too convenient - are we really meant to read Changez as a variant of the English word "changes?" Is the dead Chris really Christ? Is Erica really America? Can it all be so simplistic?

On balance, THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST is perhaps something of a literary confection: an interesting read, yet curiously light and unfulfilling given the gravity of its topic.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist was a gift from my sister's British in laws; are they trying to tell me something? It's always interesting to get another perspective, and Hamid's isn't very flattering. He offers up two views of America.
The first is of our business culture, through the caricature of Underwood Samson. US gets the best and brightest young adults and turns them into robots sent out to reduce everything to fundamentals, i.e. profit. Type of business, employees' lives, even borders do not matter. They will bow down only to the god of profit, to the point of denying their own countrymen their jobs.
The second view Hamid has of the US is through the character of Erica, a contraction of America. She is effortlessly beautiful, born wealthy, easily commands attention, calls all the shots, knows everybody and everything, and is irresistable to everyone. Only when we get up close and get to know her do we find her hopelessly screwed up. She is living in the past, skating on past glories. She cannot support herself. She is sexually disfunctional, effectively ending her bloodline. Her fate is unclear: does she die or simply disappear?
These perspectives are explained carefully and graciously to an American in Pakistan almost as a justification for the violence aimed at that same American at the end. The book is unsettling. It's almost better not knowing why were hated, especially if the reasons are largely out of the normal citizen's control.
It's hard to quantify why something is hated, but The Reluctant Fundamentalist tries to explain why the parts of the Muslim world hate the US to the point of wanting and trying to destroying our country.

I found this a gripping story. Politics really only comes in at the end. The doomed love affair between Changez and Erica, their gradual approach to physical contact, his habit of delayed gratification, waiting and waiting - all this was beautifully and sensitively sketched. His gradual, almost subconciously evolving disenchantment with "America" (meaning the United States, lest we forget the rest of the Western Hemisphere) is a revelation to read. Had Erica not "floated away" from him, he would probably not have gone back to Pakistan, although he still might have quit his job. And quitting his job did not come easy, and when he could have given two weeks notice or finished out the Chile project, he instead quits from one day to the next, commenting "But I was done with the fundamentals." A curious statement. As another reviewer has pointed out, Changez was rather emotionally detached from himself, and corporate life at Underwood Samson certainly encouraged this. He simply could not keep a lid on his emotions any longer - and for a week he walks around New York like a madman. Although there are compelling insights he offers, it is not all wisdom, and probably doesn't pretend to be. He's still a young guy, and for him all that has happened is that the pendulum has swung completely the other way - "America" is now a villain. Is Pakistan a victim? I don't think so - no more than America is a villain... Readers should also wonder why Changez is so upset with the U.S. when the tension in Pakistan is with India at the time - and that too following the attack on India's parliament attributed to terrorist groups based in Pakistan. There is even more tension within Pakistan itself, that has nothing to do with India, although much to do with the U.S. and the war against terrorism. With all due respect, the book does not get into all of the complexity of politics in Pakistan (or tribal alliances or class struggles), and this is because it does not address the issue of religion... One wonders about the book's title and the author's intent with the title, since "religion" is hardly even mentioned or discussed. Is "fundamentalism", of any type, then synonymous with emotional detachment? Is American foreign policy v. Islam a clash of fundamentalisms? For posing all these questions, this is a great book, and the fact that people are buying it restores faith in the reading public.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a novel set in a cafe in the middle of Lahore and is in a monologue form between an American tourist and a Pakistani man. The story is told by the Pakistani man named Chengaz about his time in America as a student, his first job, and his love interest with a woman named Erica. Though the story focuses on Erica, and his job, he also talks about how he was racially profiled after the events of 9/11. After that happened he talked to a man in South America where he learnt more about himself and his identity as a Pakistani man. At that point he decides to accept his Pakistani side and slowly reject the American culture that he has been exposed to. But because of that, the consequences are that people don't accept him anymore and the company he works for had to fire him and then he went back to Pakistan with his family.

I enjoyed this book because it gave me great insight to both the "American Dream" idea of many foreigners and also insight about Pakistani people and their Islamic faith. I recommend this book to anyone who would want to learn more about the Islamic faith and also to have a insight on how people after the 9/11 incident.

This book was not what I expected at all. That doesn't mean anything good or bad, it was just really different from what I had imagined upon picking it up. Changez is a young Pakistani man telling his story to an American he encounters in his hometown. Changez tries to calm the man's fears, telling him that he has lived in America and is pleased to offer hospitality to the stranger. Changez tells his story: a highly intelligent Princeton graduate who goes to work for an elite New York firm and falls in love with a beautiful American woman. Changez is torn in his new life: he loves his work, spending time with Erica, and truly feels as if he is a New Yorker (although not necessarily an American); but his heart and mind keep returning to Pakistan, especially after the 9/11 attacks and the escalation of tension between his homeland and India.

This short book packs a pretty large punch. It demonstrates how a man a normal, everyday human being, accepted and even admired one day; can turn into a fundamentalist, almost without noticing. The line is quite fine in Changez's life. Interesting premise and book, although it did feel a bit too rushed towards the end.

A focussed and relentless narrative of the travails of rootlessness, faith, and fate. Very readable. Puts you in the heart and mind of someone "other". It reminds me of The Confusion of Stones" by Marwan Hassan, which is in my view better written. "Reluctant Fundamentalist" is not the best title --- this man is not yet a fundamentalist but rather someone reacting exponentially to his life so far.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is about a man called a Pakistani man named Changez. The author talks about Changez's life in both the United States and Lahore, Pakistan. The story is about Changez and how he deals with life in the United States both before and after the event of 9/11. The story takes a huge turning point when the towers fall because that day also signified the downfall of his own life. Due to his Pakistani and Muslim status, he was heavily discriminated against. Changez then fell into the trap of depression. His prior glamorous life was now in pieces. His job at an extremely respectable firm, Underwood Samson, was in danger. Erica, the girl he loved also fell into depression and ended up committing suicide.

I really enjoyed this book because it gave me a very different view of the whole incident and America in general. This book presented the event of 9/11 from someone who was totally innocent yet was still being discriminated against. Another very special thing about this book is that it is all a monologue. Everything is told from Changez's point of view, allowing readers to focus more on him and his experiences.

I had to read this book for class and I did not really enjoy it. While many of my friends did like the book, I felt that I wanted to kill Changez by the end.
What I hated about it is the way it is presented through Changez's words. It became annoying to listen to him ramble about his life. It is also important that I don't enjoy the romance side of the book and therefore I was mostly sick of Erica and her life. Her story was mundane to me.
Other than that, there various aspects to praise in the book. My favorite thing is the ending which was really smart. By leaving the reader with an open ending, it leaves him/her with the question of where does he/she stand on the questions posed by Changez on America. While Erica may have been a symbol to Changez's relationship with America, I felt that the Moshin Hamid spent too much time on her and should have found other ways to express his ideas, at least his ways did not get to me.

I have to confess - I found the hushed stillness of fiction in the aftermath of 9/11 almost as daunting as the very sight of the falling towers. For a time, I was almost expecting some latter-day prophet to show up and proclaim, Adorno-style, that literature after Ground Zero is barbaric as well. It is of great relief, therefore, to see 9/11 being increasingly addressed now beyond the sporadic short story and pitched in longer, more substantial narratives. Novels that take on September 11 trickle in at a steady pace. We have seen, in the past few months, the publication of Helen Schulman's A Day at the Beach and Don De Lillo's exquisite prose in Falling Man. The latest fictional take on the infamous attacks is Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a short but intense novella that made it to the Man Booker Prize 2007 shortlist.

Hamid's second work (his first novel was Moth Smoke) is a dramatic monologue that discloses the story of Changez, a Pakistani university lecturer who gives an impassioned account of his days as a promising analyst at an eminent New-York based financial audit firm. The setting for his tale is as spartan as his situation at the time of narration: he sits at a popular eating-place in a crowded Lahore bazaar and feeds his story into a wraithlike American listener. `I stared', Changez tells him bluntly, `as one - and then the other - of the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center collapsed. And then I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased.'

It certainly is a daring statement for a young, ambitious Princeton graduate making a lucrative living in a corporate headquarters that boasts luxury bird's-eye views of Manhattan. But then, his entire account is self-consciously provocative, as he outlines his ambivalent affinity with America. It is the tale of a budding financial adviser hopelessly in love with Erica, an upper-middle class `regal' beauty from New York. Through her constant aura of detachment and eventual descent into psychological disorder, Changez's sweetheart may well hint at that America against whom Changez develops his multiple and contradictory identities. The young employee makes a name as a rigorous analyst, unforgiving in his science, goal-oriented -a corporate recruiter's dream come true. Things take a fateful twist on his business trip to Valparaiso, where Changez becomes aware of himself as a `janissary'. Drawing on the analogy with the young Christian hostages successfully trained as fierce Muslim fighters, he awakens to his situation as a US-trained agent operating for an exploitative US company against the interests of his homeland. This epiphanic trip brings his American career to an end and sees him boarding a plane back to Pakistan. Throughout his tale, Changez brings out many of the nuances that characterize the life of a visa-carrying Pakistani residing in post-9/11 America. `[I]t is hateful to hear another person gloat over one's country's misfortune', he tells his listener. `But surely you cannot be completely innocent of such feelings yourself'. Do you feel no joy at the video clips - so prevalent these days - of American munitions laying waste the structures of your enemies?'

9/11, therefore, provokes the demise of the "American" Changez, and 9/11, even, heightens his awareness of the other scenario that unfolded while millions around the world were glued to CNN's Breaking News. Pakistan's stand-off with India, back then, was set to escalate into a full-blown nuclear confrontation, and this facet of events becomes the catalyst of Changez's conversion. It was in America's interest, he remarks, to carpet-bomb Afghanistan and then stand back as India flexed its muscles at his homeland. As a consequence, Changez mutates vertiginously, from the gifted US-trained novice learning `to go for the fundamentals' in his analytical duties to a `fundamentalist' campaigner for Pakistan's disengagement from US foreign policy. If the `war on terror' becomes `the single most important priority of the human species', he declares, `then the lives of those of us who lived in lands in which such killers also lived had no meaning except as collateral damage.'

It is this sensibility towards the wretched of the earth that informs Changez's narrative, and it is expressed with a self-contradicting zeal that denies his listener any character whatsoever. We never get to learn much about the latter - indeed, Hamid himself suggested in a recent interview that Changez's obscure interlocutor is there to accommodate the reader - he becomes in a sense, a space through which anyone of us could contemplate the story. The narrator often curbs his own talk and barges onto the listener's thoughts, instructing him every now and then to shed off his paranoia, prejudice and xenophobia. It is a technique previously utilized by Orhan Pamuk in order to portray the ambivalent nature of the `fundamentalist' frame of mind.

`No country inflicts death so readily upon the inhabitants of other countries, frightens so many people so far away, as America', writes the Pakistani-born Hamid. But then he adds, through his protagonist, `I was perhaps more forceful on this topic than I intended'. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is effective because in its brevity it pulls off a poignant and yet self-critical indictment of post-9/11 America. Mohsin Hamid's depiction of a hesitant fundamentalist is itself anything but reluctant - it lays bare an astonishing insight into the complex power-mongering of our age, and is performed with a relish in storytelling that promises more of Hamid, and soon.

The language in this novella is fluid; it is a short piece (framed as a tale told over a dinner) that pulls in the reader. The narrator (Changez) spins his story of his initial embrace and ultimate rejection of the upwardly mobile existence of a Pakistani-born Princeton alum living in corporate America post-9/11. The book tries to answer big questions about why America both attracts and repels the alien observer in the early 21st century. It disappoints. The novel surfs instead of diving deep into motivations and milieu. The characters surrounding the narrator (a sad beautiful WASP love interest, a workplace mentor) are drawn sketchily. Is it because these Americans are ultimately unfathomable to Changez? Perhaps, but the characterization of the narrator, and his transformation, also remains oddly unspecific. There is a lack of detailed descriptions of either New York after 9/11 (which had a distinct feel) or Lahore. Changez watches Afghanistan being bombed, and tensions rising in South Asia, and he increasingly finds himself questioning his role in his adopted country. His disillusionment seems reasonable enough (we know from poll statistics the punishment that US image has taken globally in the last 6 years), but Hamid does not offer probing insight to the issue. The book would be strengthened by more particulars about the situation and attitudes of South Asian and Muslim immigrants to the US. Changez's transformation and radicalization comes so quickly. The novel's conclusion offers an intriguing ambiguity.

The way this book is written is really great. The whole thing is told to me, a buff American soldier, by a bearded Pakistani man who sits at my table uninvited and unwanted.

I don't get to read my own lines, of course. Just his reactions to them. Which is a lot of fun. But the man's life story is a little too much I LOVE ERICA for me, and I'm not crazy about the ambiguous ending - and I normally love crazy endings.

His name means change. He, like most people does not want to change. But he does, dramatically, if not reluctantly. He lets go of Erica, his love. He gives up his high paying corporate job in which his focus on the minutiae provides his life meaning. He sacrifices the approval, understanding and encouragement of Jim, his father figure boss. He trades his American lifestyle and the ability to monetarily help his Pakistani family for life in Lahore as a university lecturer exposing the flaws of American foreign policy to his students. The format of the story, Changez relating his life's tale in the first person to an American visitor, for me sometimes became tedious but at the completion I understood it to be a brilliant tactic and a major part of the change in the way I view American/Pakistani relations.

I did find it disturbing that there were many errors in spelling in this English translation, perhaps another sign of my need to change mindless beliefs.

This is probably the only novel of its kind, a novel with no lyrical descriptions of people and places. It has no dialogue at all; in fact, the entire novel is a long, gripping monologue.

A novel in the form of a monologue and without a dialogue is a brilliant and novel idea, and it works magnificently in this case only because Mohsin Hamid is a superb writer with formidable prowess. He grips the reader's mind with polished and haunting prose.

The hero of the novel, Changez, a student from Lahore, Pakistan, attends Princeton University. After graduation at the top in his class, he secures an excellent and well-paying job at the elite valuation firm Underwood Samson. He becomes well-adjusted and well-accustomed to the American way of life, falls in love with the beautiful and elegant, Princeton-educated Erica, who hails from an aristocratic family. For the first time in his life Changez is happy. Then, unexpectedly, on September 11, 2001, two planes crash into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. As a result, the towers collapse. And along with the towers, Changez's personal world also collapses. When the terrorists are identified as Muslims from Saudi Arabia, and people, anchormen, and the media speculate about the reasons for the attack, Changez finds himself questioning the injustices perpetrated by America abroad. His priorities in life change, and he neglects his job. And as a result he loses his job. He returns to Lahore, where at a market in the district of Old Anarkali, he meets an American stranger. The novel is narrated as a monologue addressed to this stranger.

Read what Changez says to the stranger about Princeton University: "Every fall, Princeton raised her skirt for the corporate recruiters who came onto campus and-as you say in America-showed them some skin. The skin Princeton showed was good skin, of course-young, eloquent, and clever as can be-but even among all that skin, I knew in my senior year that I was something special. I was a perfect breast, if you will-tan, succulent, seemingly defiant of gravity-and I was confident of getting any job I wanted."

A few readers have felt that the ending of the novel, though stunning, was all too sudden. But the author has explained in interviews that the ending was intentional. "It was always intended to end as it does. For me, the reader is a character in a novel, and the way one reads it shapes the outcome. So a reader who is more suspicious of Pakistanis might read it differently from one who is more suspicious of Americans. But it is the fear we are all being fed, the sense that something menacing lurks in the shadows of our world, that has the potential to make the novel a thriller," he has said.

Because the events in the novel occur in the shadow of the fall of the Twin Towers, and the novel is written from the perspective of a typical Muslim's mind, and a Muslim from Pakistan, the book has generated a minor storm of controversy. But most of the professional reviewers, and major magazines such as Time, and newspapers such as the NYT, The Guardian, and even the Publishers Weekly and the acerbic Kirkus Review, to name a few, have been fair and kind to the author, and all have written glowing reviews.

I found the novel riveting. Using words smooth as pebbles in a riverbed, the author has produced a novel with a thousand sharp edges. The wounds inflicted by the incidents on September 11, 2001, on Americans' minds, have not yet healed. The author has touched the living scabs of the wounds, rekindling the pain. This novel will make you think about our prejudices and preconceived ideas and it will prompt you to look deep within yourself also, and to ponder about our world which has changed so drastically, almost overnight. It's a masterful feat befitting a great writer. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Mohsin Hamid is an impressive master of English prose.

Reading this novel will leave you spell bound, and it will also literally take your breath away.

This took a while to get going, as it's an unusual voice. You feel like you're watching a one-man show, as the character describes the setting, what the others in the theatre are doing, etc. Soon, however, you're so drawn in, this becomes an all-night read.
Hamid writes of a Pakistani Princeton graduate who is offered a top position in the business world. Then 9/11 happens, and this perfect world he's been invited to join reveals cracks...too many of them. It's a fascinating story.

I started this book last night and just finished it. This is one of those books you just DON'T WANT to put down. The story calls you back when the book is not in your hand. It was eloquently written and the subject matter was so thought provoking. Every choice we make impacts not only ourselves, but those close to us and even those we do not know. The ripple effect of this story is fascinating. It's obviously early in the year, but I think this book will remain at the top of my reads this year!!

I went to a book signing for this novel the other night and was surprised to hear Mohsin Hamid's method for writing. He said that he wrote over 1000 pages to come up with this 184 page novel. The thing was, he didn't whittle it down from 1000 pages in length, it was that he re-wrote the premise in several different drafts without re-using the previously written text.

He said it wasn't an efficient method, but one that ultimately worked for him.

The structure of the story is different from most novels in that it is a monologue of one character speaking to another. The reader has to fill in the gaps, and wonder what the motivation is for the American man who winds up listening to this Pakistani man's life story.

There is tension that builds in the story, and Changez the narrator uses politeness as a method to manipulate others.

The style is clean, and it is easy to be drawn into the story and read in a single sitting if time permits. I recommend it highly.

Mohsin Hamid's "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," a novel shortlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize, has a killer hook. Changez, a Pakistani graduated top of his class from Princeton working at a financial firm in Manhattan, slowly becomes radicalized by America's response to the 9/11 attacks. Sitting down at a restaurant in Lahore, Pakistan, with a mysterious man who appears to be an American military operative, Changez tells the story of how he came to renounce the U.S.

The novel, briskly told in 184 pages, neither sensationalizes the subject matter nor uses it to lecture. Hamid tells the story in second person, with Changez as narrator and the reader in the position of the operative. "Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance?" it begins. "Do not be frightened by my beard: I am a lover of America." As his story unravels, it becomes clear that something terrible is going to happen between Changez and the American, a cat-and-mouse game that's all the more intriguing because it isn't clear who's predator and prey.

Changez' job in Manhattan is to evaluate the financial condition of troubled companies with a ruthless eye towards the bottom line, cutting costs and downsizing workforces to grease the wheels for a buyout. "Focus on the fundamentals," his company drills into his head, putting a different spin on the novel's title than the scowling young Muslim on the cover.

The particulars of the narrator's daily life in New York are secondary, at least in my mind, to his attempt to explain to an American why he renounced the country, returned home and took action against it. Hamid's storytelling is most compelling when Changez wrestles with feelings that would inspire the disgust of his American colleagues:

"The bombing of Afghanistan had already been underway for a fortnight, and I had been avoiding the evening news, preferring not to watch the partisan and sports-event-like coverage given to the mismatch between the American bombers with their twenty-first-century weaponry and the ill-equipped and ill-fed Afghan tribesmen below. On those rare occasions when I did find myself confronted by such programming -- in a bar, say, or at the entrance to the cable company's offices -- I was reminded of the film Terminator, but with the roles reversed so the machines were cast as heroes."

Least compelling was his romance with an American woman that's one-sided, charmless and grim.

The war that nearly happened between India and Pakistan after the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, an event I had almost forgotten, figures heavily in the book. Changez returns home as one million troops mass on the border. Hamid describes Lahore, the hometown of Changez and himself, in an unexpected way that demonstrates the glope-sweeping breadth of the Muslim world: "Lahore was the last major city in a contiguous swath of Muslim lands stretching as far west as Morocco and had therefore that quality of understated bravado characteristic of frontier towns."

Wounded national pride figures strongly in "Reluctant Fundamentalist," which ratchets up the tension towards a thrilling end. Hamid began the book before 9/11 to tell the story of why a secular Muslim, living large among America's elite, might resent the country. 9/11 changed everything.

It all starts with "Excuse me sir, but may I be of assistance?"

The story begins when our protagonist Changez strikes up a conversation with an American in Lahore, Pakistan. In the beginning the conversation is cleverly fawning but quickly evolves into something else - something more directly acquisitory.

I think this is an important book for Americans to read since what we have is a conversation, although only one side is heard, between American culture and the elements within the moderate Islamic world that feel increasingly alienated from that world, and who for many complicated reasons find themselves drawn to the world of Islamic fundamentalism.

Now more than ever we must abandon parochialism. It is too dangerous and too inefficient.

The story of the Reluctant Fundamentalist is a monologue by Changez, a Pakistani-born graduate from Princeton, to a visitor in his native town of Lahore.

The book is about Changez's change/realization, which transforms him from an American financial analyst from Princeton to an individual reintroduced to his cultural identity and family. The book begins when Changez accepts a job at a valuation firm and begins a relationship with an American girl named Erica. During the story, 9-11 occurs and the Indian-Pakistani conflict arises. Changez sees America's global role as one of self-interest and he feels as though he is leaving behind his natural culture and identity.

The Reluctant Fundamentalism does not delve into religious fundamentalism much at all, nor does it go into any detail about criticism of the United State's foreign policy. It focuses around Changez inner struggle, his relationship with Erica, his relationship with his work, and his continuing desire for resolution in his sense of identity.

Overall, an enjoyable, easy, and relatively quick read.

The language in this novella is fluid; it is a short piece (framed as a tale told over a dinner) that pulls in the reader. The narrator (Changez) spins his story of his initial embrace and ultimate rejection of the upwardly mobile existence of a Pakistani-born Princeton alum living in corporate America post-9/11. The book tries to answer big questions about why America both attracts and repels the alien observer in the early 21st century. It disappoints. The novel surfs instead of diving deep into motivations and milieu. The characters surrounding the narrator (a sad beautiful WASP love interest, a workplace mentor) are drawn sketchily. Is it because these Americans are ultimately unfathomable to Changez? Perhaps, but the characterization of the narrator, and his transformation, also remains oddly unspecific. There is a lack of detailed descriptions of either New York after 9/11 (which had a distinct feel) or Lahore. Changez watches Afghanistan being bombed, and tensions rising in South Asia, and he increasingly finds himself questioning his role in his adopted country. His disillusionment seems reasonable enough (we know from poll statistics the punishment that US image has taken globally in the last 6 years), but Hamid does not offer probing insight to the issue. The book would be strengthened by more particulars about the situation and attitudes of South Asian and Muslim immigrants to the US. Changez's transformation and radicalization comes so quickly. The novel's conclusion offers an intriguing ambiguity.

The way this book is written is really great. The whole thing is told to me, a buff American soldier, by a bearded Pakistani man who sits at my table uninvited and unwanted.

I don't get to read my own lines, of course. Just his reactions to them. Which is a lot of fun. But the man's life story is a little too much I LOVE ERICA for me, and I'm not crazy about the ambiguous ending - and I normally love crazy endings.

His name means change. He, like most people does not want to change. But he does, dramatically, if not reluctantly. He lets go of Erica, his love. He gives up his high paying corporate job in which his focus on the minutiae provides his life meaning. He sacrifices the approval, understanding and encouragement of Jim, his father figure boss. He trades his American lifestyle and the ability to monetarily help his Pakistani family for life in Lahore as a university lecturer exposing the flaws of American foreign policy to his students. The format of the story, Changez relating his life's tale in the first person to an American visitor, for me sometimes became tedious but at the completion I understood it to be a brilliant tactic and a major part of the change in the way I view American/Pakistani relations.

I did find it disturbing that there were many errors in spelling in this English translation, perhaps another sign of my need to change mindless beliefs.

This is probably the only novel of its kind, a novel with no lyrical descriptions of people and places. It has no dialogue at all; in fact, the entire novel is a long, gripping monologue.

A novel in the form of a monologue and without a dialogue is a brilliant and novel idea, and it works magnificently in this case only because Mohsin Hamid is a superb writer with formidable prowess. He grips the reader's mind with polished and haunting prose.

The hero of the novel, Changez, a student from Lahore, Pakistan, attends Princeton University. After graduation at the top in his class, he secures an excellent and well-paying job at the elite valuation firm Underwood Samson. He becomes well-adjusted and well-accustomed to the American way of life, falls in love with the beautiful and elegant, Princeton-educated Erica, who hails from an aristocratic family. For the first time in his life Changez is happy. Then, unexpectedly, on September 11, 2001, two planes crash into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. As a result, the towers collapse. And along with the towers, Changez's personal world also collapses. When the terrorists are identified as Muslims from Saudi Arabia, and people, anchormen, and the media speculate about the reasons for the attack, Changez finds himself questioning the injustices perpetrated by America abroad. His priorities in life change, and he neglects his job. And as a result he loses his job. He returns to Lahore, where at a market in the district of Old Anarkali, he meets an American stranger. The novel is narrated as a monologue addressed to this stranger.

Read what Changez says to the stranger about Princeton University: "Every fall, Princeton raised her skirt for the corporate recruiters who came onto campus and-as you say in America-showed them some skin. The skin Princeton showed was good skin, of course-young, eloquent, and clever as can be-but even among all that skin, I knew in my senior year that I was something special. I was a perfect breast, if you will-tan, succulent, seemingly defiant of gravity-and I was confident of getting any job I wanted."

A few readers have felt that the ending of the novel, though stunning, was all too sudden. But the author has explained in interviews that the ending was intentional. "It was always intended to end as it does. For me, the reader is a character in a novel, and the way one reads it shapes the outcome. So a reader who is more suspicious of Pakistanis might read it differently from one who is more suspicious of Americans. But it is the fear we are all being fed, the sense that something menacing lurks in the shadows of our world, that has the potential to make the novel a thriller," he has said.

Because the events in the novel occur in the shadow of the fall of the Twin Towers, and the novel is written from the perspective of a typical Muslim's mind, and a Muslim from Pakistan, the book has generated a minor storm of controversy. But most of the professional reviewers, and major magazines such as Time, and newspapers such as the NYT, The Guardian, and even the Publishers Weekly and the acerbic Kirkus Review, to name a few, have been fair and kind to the author, and all have written glowing reviews.

I found the novel riveting. Using words smooth as pebbles in a riverbed, the author has produced a novel with a thousand sharp edges. The wounds inflicted by the incidents on September 11, 2001, on Americans' minds, have not yet healed. The author has touched the living scabs of the wounds, rekindling the pain. This novel will make you think about our prejudices and preconceived ideas and it will prompt you to look deep within yourself also, and to ponder about our world which has changed so drastically, almost overnight. It's a masterful feat befitting a great writer. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Mohsin Hamid is an impressive master of English prose.

Reading this novel will leave you spell bound, and it will also literally take your breath away.

This took a while to get going, as it's an unusual voice. You feel like you're watching a one-man show, as the character describes the setting, what the others in the theatre are doing, etc. Soon, however, you're so drawn in, this becomes an all-night read.
Hamid writes of a Pakistani Princeton graduate who is offered a top position in the business world. Then 9/11 happens, and this perfect world he's been invited to join reveals cracks...too many of them. It's a fascinating story.

I started this book last night and just finished it. This is one of those books you just DON'T WANT to put down. The story calls you back when the book is not in your hand. It was eloquently written and the subject matter was so thought provoking. Every choice we make impacts not only ourselves, but those close to us and even those we do not know. The ripple effect of this story is fascinating. It's obviously early in the year, but I think this book will remain at the top of my reads this year!!

I went to a book signing for this novel the other night and was surprised to hear Mohsin Hamid's method for writing. He said that he wrote over 1000 pages to come up with this 184 page novel. The thing was, he didn't whittle it down from 1000 pages in length, it was that he re-wrote the premise in several different drafts without re-using the previously written text.

He said it wasn't an efficient method, but one that ultimately worked for him.

The structure of the story is different from most novels in that it is a monologue of one character speaking to another. The reader has to fill in the gaps, and wonder what the motivation is for the American man who winds up listening to this Pakistani man's life story.

There is tension that builds in the story, and Changez the narrator uses politeness as a method to manipulate others.

The style is clean, and it is easy to be drawn into the story and read in a single sitting if time permits. I recommend it highly.

Mohsin Hamid's "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," a novel shortlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize, has a killer hook. Changez, a Pakistani graduated top of his class from Princeton working at a financial firm in Manhattan, slowly becomes radicalized by America's response to the 9/11 attacks. Sitting down at a restaurant in Lahore, Pakistan, with a mysterious man who appears to be an American military operative, Changez tells the story of how he came to renounce the U.S.

The novel, briskly told in 184 pages, neither sensationalizes the subject matter nor uses it to lecture. Hamid tells the story in second person, with Changez as narrator and the reader in the position of the operative. "Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance?" it begins. "Do not be frightened by my beard: I am a lover of America." As his story unravels, it becomes clear that something terrible is going to happen between Changez and the American, a cat-and-mouse game that's all the more intriguing because it isn't clear who's predator and prey.

Changez' job in Manhattan is to evaluate the financial condition of troubled companies with a ruthless eye towards the bottom line, cutting costs and downsizing workforces to grease the wheels for a buyout. "Focus on the fundamentals," his company drills into his head, putting a different spin on the novel's title than the scowling young Muslim on the cover.

The particulars of the narrator's daily life in New York are secondary, at least in my mind, to his attempt to explain to an American why he renounced the country, returned home and took action against it. Hamid's storytelling is most compelling when Changez wrestles with feelings that would inspire the disgust of his American colleagues:

"The bombing of Afghanistan had already been underway for a fortnight, and I had been avoiding the evening news, preferring not to watch the partisan and sports-event-like coverage given to the mismatch between the American bombers with their twenty-first-century weaponry and the ill-equipped and ill-fed Afghan tribesmen below. On those rare occasions when I did find myself confronted by such programming -- in a bar, say, or at the entrance to the cable company's offices -- I was reminded of the film Terminator, but with the roles reversed so the machines were cast as heroes."

Least compelling was his romance with an American woman that's one-sided, charmless and grim.

The war that nearly happened between India and Pakistan after the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, an event I had almost forgotten, figures heavily in the book. Changez returns home as one million troops mass on the border. Hamid describes Lahore, the hometown of Changez and himself, in an unexpected way that demonstrates the glope-sweeping breadth of the Muslim world: "Lahore was the last major city in a contiguous swath of Muslim lands stretching as far west as Morocco and had therefore that quality of understated bravado characteristic of frontier towns."

Wounded national pride figures strongly in "Reluctant Fundamentalist," which ratchets up the tension towards a thrilling end. Hamid began the book before 9/11 to tell the story of why a secular Muslim, living large among America's elite, might resent the country. 9/11 changed everything.

It all starts with "Excuse me sir, but may I be of assistance?"

The story begins when our protagonist Changez strikes up a conversation with an American in Lahore, Pakistan. In the beginning the conversation is cleverly fawning but quickly evolves into something else - something more directly acquisitory.

I think this is an important book for Americans to read since what we have is a conversation, although only one side is heard, between American culture and the elements within the moderate Islamic world that feel increasingly alienated from that world, and who for many complicated reasons find themselves drawn to the world of Islamic fundamentalism.

Now more than ever we must abandon parochialism. It is too dangerous and too inefficient.

The story of the Reluctant Fundamentalist is a monologue by Changez, a Pakistani-born graduate from Princeton, to a visitor in his native town of Lahore.

The book is about Changez's change/realization, which transforms him from an American financial analyst from Princeton to an individual reintroduced to his cultural identity and family. The book begins when Changez accepts a job at a valuation firm and begins a relationship with an American girl named Erica. During the story, 9-11 occurs and the Indian-Pakistani conflict arises. Changez sees America's global role as one of self-interest and he feels as though he is leaving behind his natural culture and identity.

The Reluctant Fundamentalism does not delve into religious fundamentalism much at all, nor does it go into any detail about criticism of the United State's foreign policy. It focuses around Changez inner struggle, his relationship with Erica, his relationship with his work, and his continuing desire for resolution in his sense of identity.

Overall, an enjoyable, easy, and relatively quick read.

Excuse me, Sir, can I offer up an opinion on Mr.Hamid's mighty fine short novel? Yes you say. But you fear not liking it as it is written as a long monolog. You say, again, you're not a big fan of this style so you will pass and read another book. Well, I can only answer that you will miss a valuable voice and I do so recommend this book. Why? Well it offers a compelling and interesting view. It is about a very successful and well educated Pakistani immigrant's changing views of America. Correct, his name is Changez. Changez talks about how he comes to terms with his one great love, her name is Erica and recent events. You now look closely at me and I assume note the bulge under my arm beneath my jacket. Never you mind it is not what you think as I will not force you to read this. I suggest you do and it is up to you on what your reaction might be. Look I have to go right now. I will leave you to read and listen to Changez. It is something every American should do. But no you say, you really feel you know all you need to know about other countries. As I said to my last visitor, it would be good to have a cup of coffee and listen to Changez story. But if you don't.... well let me just take my jacket off a while.

What I liked about this book goes beyond the concrete issues everyone seems to belabor, like the war and the stereotypes of America that Changez constantly refers to. I love the book's (or Hamid's) ideas that transcend these, like the notion of nostalgia, or the analogy of a power having such force that we might, under its wings, turn against our roots. Exeriences like these come in all shapes and levels of complexity, and many of us have had them, whether we know it or not. I also found Hamid's style compelling (although the monologue sometimes felt like a cop-out; I've never been a fan of the second person narration, no matter who the 2nd person is, reader or otherwise). His directness reminded me of Coehlo's in The Alchemist, where the analysis is spelled out in such a way that the reader might not have to think; but, really, we DO think. In fact, the spelling out provokes us to contemplate beyond the page or the story, to a more personal and richer analysis. Changez states clearly that Erica suffered from nostalgia and that he, too, suffers from the same affliction. Juxtapose those feelings with his company's focus on fundamentals. What a great discussion! How does nostalgia inform our present condition? How dangerous is it? How healthy? All sorts of provocative questions and discussions can derive from the simple foundation Hamid lays out for us.

Also, Changez's very sudden change of heart about America and about his homeland is revealed clearly and, for some readers, unrealistically. Changez even comments on his surprise that it took so long for him to get to such a powerful point of perspective. The story line takes us on that same long journey, and just as abruptly as he is, the reader is seized by this change of heart. The mystification in which Changez was paralyzed was created by a greater force that, on realization, was suddenly so obvious to him. It does not matter if his transformation (or change) is realistic or not - what matters is what we, as readers, do with it.

I am curious about a previous reviewer's comment that the story flows and is fun to read (I agree), but that the BOOK is not to be praised as much as the author. I don't agree, but I see the point. Some other, less sophisticated comments suggest that it was a wasteful read, especially after discovering Hamid's purpose for writing. That's sad: good books and good readers need not have the author's personal history or intention in mind to fully embrace an opinion, an analysis, or a likeness of a story, even a National Bestseller.

Rarely will I describe a book as beautiful. Yet I cannot think of a more befitting descriptive for Mohsin Hamid's THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST.

The story centers around a meeting at an outdoor café in Lahore between a Pakistani man named Changez and a suspicious-looking American with the bearing that makes him out to be either military or intelligence agent. Changez engages the man initially in tea and conversation. After awhile, seeing the American most attentive --and also a bit wary of his surroundings, the Pakistani orders dinner for the two of them; meanwhile going deeper into his memories about times spent in America, as a student at Princeton and later as a rising star at a New York valuation firm. Changez also recollects his budding romance with Erica, the daughter of a wealthy investment banker who was sure to enable Changez's entry to high society. Changez was well on his way to success when the twin towers of the World Trade Center came tumbling down on September 11, 2001.

Changez's reaction to their collapse alarms and confuses him; he finds himself smiling and overjoyed. The elation, however, isn't over the deaths of 3,000 innocent people, but rather thet there are those who are able to strike at the United States --an entity which has long held him in awe with its almost limitless power, wealth and ability to affect the world: sometimes for the best, sometimes for the worst. As America becomes enraged and seeks revenge upon anything and anyone Muslim, he reads reports of Pakistan becoming coerced into the war against Afghanistan and of India taking advantage of this situation threatening his homeland. Becoming ever more distanced from our society and his work, it becomes increasingly harder for Changez to continue at his career. A job which he now sees as dependent upon the expense and suffering of others. Making matters worse, Erica, the one person who perhaps could have kept him grounded and focused, suffers a mental relapse over the shock of 9/11. Erica slips back into the debilitating state she suffered over the death of her longtime childhood friend and lover, Chris, two years earlier. Eventually Changez returns to Pakistan. Changez today is a different man from the ambitious and obedient corporate cog he described living back in New York. Yet as he speaks to the American about his country's indifference to the rest of the world, about America's unconcern for the expense her wars of revenge are costing others, he still he cannot hide his love for America. However, it is no longer the romanticizing love of an infatuated innocent, instead it is the love one has for another depite all the other's faults and abuses. A love reluctant, but love nonetheless.

The monologue telling of this story is beguiling. Changez holds the reader spellbound as he keeps the unidentified American man's interest for hours. Mohsin Hamid's gift for words and symbolism, and the intricacies he creates with them, is astounding. Admittedly, some of Changez actions and statements will repel many of us American readers (his gleeful response to the jets slamming into the Twin Towers certainly did it to me). Keep in mind, however, that this is a voice which exists amongst millions of those out there, from Totonto and London, to Pakistan and Indonesia. It is a voice we have been told to ignore, but it still won't go away. That's because it is not only the voice of the popeyed rageboys constantly being shown in our media, but also the voice of men like Changez, who tried making sense of America's dichotomies, but can no longer struggle to reconcile the willful ignorance and arrogant indifference that exists within our nation's beauty and spirit. So, we may call them "fundamentalists," but we must start to recognize that many are reluctant to be such. They have the rageboys, but we have the coldly calculating geopolitical experts, who smile and assure us of our "national interests." Changes must come from all of us.

This book reminds me of an Indian movie named "Swades". I liked the book because I can relate to it on some levels, particularly because I myself have been a Janissary for half a decade now :-). I found his writing very smooth. The narration flows so well from line to line. It was a good read.
There are some good thoughts about humanity and contemporary politics. I think Americans will find this to be a very interesting read with the Pakistani culture the author sews into the narration and of course the perspective of a Muslim outsider.

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

I love the narration of this novel, the escalating tension, the way the author manages to convey the character of the nameless and faceless American listener in the cafe. The story is also compelling and the novel raises questions that we should at least think about, even if we don't find them comfortable or agree with the actions or viewpoints of the character Changez.

Some of the other reviews here have been excessively harsh. I personally did not think Changez is a religious "fundamentalist"--nowhere in the text does he reveal a belief in Islamic fundamentalism. He isn't even a religious character. Ironically, the primary times when "fundamental" appears is with respect to the "fundamentals first" approach of the ruthless Wall Street firm where Changez works--reluctantly. So I understood the book's title to refer to Changez' growing reluctance to be a part of the capitalist machinery. Where does he become a Muslim fundamentalist? He doesn't. Some reviewers also need to remember that Changez is a fictional character, not an actual guy--and please don't confuse the fictional narrator with the author.

That being said, some of the reviews give excessive praise. It does seem to me that if part of the author's goal is to provide insight into the perspective of the immigrant or sympathy for the immigrant's divided loyalties, the book fails by actually *perpetuating* stereotypes rather than challenging them. The writing itself is so strong and captivating that not until I completed the book did I realize how thin and stereotypical Changez turns out to be. There just isn't a lot of insight here. Changez finally comes across as shallow, superficial, self-absorbed, and entitled (in short, all the things he criticizes in American society).

I also felt perturbed by the fact that Changez' perceptions of America are gleaned solely from his interactions at the highest echelon of society. The corner of America in which he functions is indeed ruthless and elitist--towards the majority of our own citizens as well. But the upper-crust Ivy League aspect of America is not the whole country, and Changez draws his conclusions about America based on his interactions with a very small portion of it.

In the end, Hamid posits an excessively simplistic binary opposition that fails to satisfy. Hamid is a brilliant writer and has developed an effective literary device, but in the long run I found myself too disturbed to continue identifying with Changez, and disappointed that crucial opportunities for insights into cross-cultural conflicts were lost. I finished the book with the fear that such a simplistic approach will do more harm than good when it comes to promoting understanding, tolerance, and peace.

Apart from the basic flow of the plot, there are certain areas which the author needs to focus on in his future works, these may be technicalities, but it sometimes can kill the overall concept of enjoying a good book, if strayed from excessively.

usage of double negatives (not unlikely, not insignificant etc.. even used contextually, can be highly irritating after a certain point.

I was amused as to how the author, in almost a sophomoric beavis & butthead kind of way, addresses Jim's sexuality.

Very poor character study done of the protagonist, does not make sense to hate Americans and at the same time engage in such a conversation of such personal depth with a complete stranger, who happens to be a yank.

Isn't the whole servile approach of South east Asians towards "gora" (means white man in Hindi) done to death, and saturated in every book and media? Its silly for him (the bearded 'reluctant fundamentalist') to talk in such a way, for a princeton educated boy. You would think his dialogue would sound more confident, with purpose, not some 'sahib' rambling.

His paragraph regarding the 'happy' reaction to 9/11 has zero bearing to the plot whatsoever and one begins to wonder whether it was how the Author himself personally felt towards 9/11, that he is subliminally bringing out in the book.

The one issue that remains at large is the crucial point of how the story of Janissaries, are twisted in this story. A Muslim will always be a Muslim first and foremost, country and community comes only after that a distant second and third.

Overall, this is an author who shows good promise and i would look forward to reading his future works, provided he does better research and shows a bit more maturity in his approach of character study.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid tells the story of a Pakistani citizen named Changez, his move from an undergraduate degree at Princeton to an NYC-based valuation firm called Underwood Samson & Company, and his relationship with the WASP-ish Erica, pre- and post-9/11. Changez narrates the entire novel--at times in first person, but often in second person as well, as Hamid frames the story as a conversation between Changez (now returned to Pakistan) and an un-named American man in the Old Anarkali Bazaar in Lahore. Changez invites the American man to try a cup of tea, which turns into a full meal and then dessert. What begins as a seemingly harmless conversation slowly darkens as the novel progresses.

Just as Changez's politeness masks something perhaps more sinister, the novel's apparent stream-lined simplicity masks its depth and richness. The novel resounds with the theme of isolation v.s. openness and appearances v.s. reality. Obsessed with her memories of Chris, a childhood friend-turned-lover who has passed away, Erica retreats further and further into herself, preferring to live in her own fantasies rather than in the real world. Her inward movement mirrors America's growing mistrust of "foreigners" and increasing isolationism post-9/11. Changez, on the other hand, moves from an isolated focus on solely "getting the job done" and appraising companies to realizing that the reports he and his company makes affect the companies' employees--real people trying to make a living. He begins as well to view himself as a perpetual outsider, and to connect these companies to larger flows of capital--capital that is disproportionately held by people of Erica's complexion rather than his own.

Another theme in the novel, connected to that of isolation and openness, is that of control. Hamid's novel is very much a novel of "talking back" (à la Edward Said)--of insisting that one's voice be heard in a world that so frequently ignores or talks over it. The only voice we truly hear in The Reluctant Fundamentalist is Changez's. Changez holds his two layers of audience (the unnamed American and the reader holding the book) essentially captive. While he includes dialogue between himself and other characters, one is always aware that this dialogue is filtered through Changez's limited first-person report of the conversation. As such, Hamid also conflates the reader with the uncomfortable American, who, twitchy and suspicious, views everyone around him as a potential threat.

Interestingly, however, the novel does not entirely reassure us that the figures of whom the American is suspicious aren't, in fact, a threat to him. The novel ends ambiguously. Because we only receive the information Changez gives us, we will never know what actually happens on the dark road in front of the American's hotel. In other words, the novel itself is dangerously uni-vocal, warning us through its very structure against only listening to one side of any story.

Hamid's novel thus utilizes a technique--oral storytelling--often explored in post-colonial novels, and with, I think, the intent of "talking back" against the dominant, hegemonic voices, and it explores post-colonial themes of fractured identity, diaspora, and flows of global capital. But it does this so subtly, one might barely register the way it very faintly echoes sprawling epics like Patrick Chamoiseau's Texaco or Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. Hamid's novel is like its narrator--intelligent, well-mannered, deeper than it may appear, focused, controlled, and sinister. While giving a 3D portrayal of a (mostly) sympathetic man and telling what appears at first to be primarily a love story, it also raises questions that it doesn't fully answer--not just about the text itself, but also about how to live ethically, fully, and also safely as an American, as a Pakistani, and as a global citizen post-9/11.

For Westerners, especially Americans, this book is a primer on Middle Eastern discontent. It is not a story rooted in religious delusion, but rather cultural incompatibility.
This soliloquy (in the first person) expands on the life of a disaffected immigrant, in his final disassociation with America.
Unless the reader was raised in the US, this story may disappoint or puzzle many. But in today's content (attempted bombings and retaliations), it is prescient.
A joy to read and a must have for anyone who seeks understanding.

A fantastically written book that pulls the reader in emotionally, as if the narrator was a personal aquaintance rather than a fictional character (I found myself wanting to yell "NO!" out loud on more than one occasion). The plot is so real it is still hard for me to believe this is a fictional novel at all.

The entire book is a one-sided conversation between the Pakistani protagonist, Changez, and an American visitor. Changez gives a riveting history of his time in the United States, from his enrollment at Princeton at age 18 to his return to Pakistan at age 22. It is amazing the transformation he goes through in the post-9/11 era. Throughout the novel we also learn of a romance that folds in upon itself.

Overall, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a powerful, emotional read that may just give you a new set of eyes in regard to America's post-9/11 policies.

More than any well-researched article you may read, this haunting and oddly frightening piece of fiction will give you insight into the dynamic that can turn a Western-educated Muslim from a rising star on Wall Street into a coordinator of jihadist efforts. The writing is deliberately ambiguous and unsettling. New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2007.

I first saw and heard him six weeks ago at a book reading in the British Council in Delhi.

His name is Mohsin Hamid. He grew up in Lahore, Pakistan and studied at Princeton University and Harvard Law School, in the United States. When he came on the stage I saw a slight man, with receding hair, glasses and a quiet air. He was introduced by the British Council staff and began reading. His voice was pleasant to the ear and without accent.

Hamid read from the first chapter of his book, describing an on-campus interview with a large and successful firm that specializes in 'valuations' of firms up for acquisition.

The book is written in first person, as a conversation between himself and an American stranger he encounters in a cafe in Lahore. The conversation is his story and happens between dusk and nightfall. I too finished it in two hours, between 10 PM and 12 AM.

The story is about a young man, Changez, who is the amongst the best and brightest of his graduating class at Princeton, and his entry into the world of New York - his work, his meeting and getting to know a beautiful American woman called Erica, and his life in the exalted circles of the city, that Erica introduces him to. But, in the aftermath of September 11, his position in the city he has grown to love, changes. Erica slowly disappears into her ghosts of the past and he begins to see his work through a new lens. His identity shifts - unearthing allegiances more fundamental than power, money and love.

Hamids' transformation of Changez - from a middle class well educated young man to someone who begins to be more questioning of what he had adopted so readily - is easy to understand. It evokes a classic dilemma that provokes a choice - between the supposed freedom and democracy of America, to the dictatorship and restrictions of Pakistan. Is this the clash of civilizations?

Not really. But, it is a difference of realities and perceptions. And, this difference is hard to bridge. When events such as September 11 occur, they provide us with the opportunity to ask the most fundamental questions, of ourselves and those around us. Who am I? What do I stand for? What do I believe in? Who is my family, my community? What is my country?

People like Hamid and me, who span across at least two predominant cultures, are caught at the edge of each. Where do we belong? I like to think of myself as a person who is comfortable with a leg in each and yet I want my own identity. I won't let my country, family or people tell me what to think or how to behave. But, when I live in a culture that is predominantly the other, I may have to conform to that culture. I don't need to give up what I hold dear, but I need my ear to the ground in a way I don't in my own country.

Changez leaves America, his job, and that world. He returns to Pakistan and tries to make sense of what is happening around him. In many ways, he becomes more fundamental than he ever was. Very reluctantly.

The 184 page, double spaced book is riveting. It is sharp, the writing is tight and the descriptions perfect. Not an extra syllable is used and the pace of the narrative brisk.

This is Hamid's second book. His first, Moth Smoke was published in ten languages and won many awards. He also writes about politics from a Muslim perspective for Time, New York Times and the Guardian, among others.

Mohsin Hamid writes so well that were it not for the propulsive force of his quietly building suspense story, the reader would be tempted to linger over passages of elegantly beautiful prose. THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST is a timely book, yes, but it is far more: the novel underscores the talent of a superlative writer unafraid to place before the public a story that is bound to create a disturbing response at the end of the roller coaster ride.

Cleverly written as a monologue from a Pakistani young man named Changez (a name when pronounced delivers major clues to the story!) as he joins an American in a cafe in Lahore, Pakistan. The story reveals a young lad from a family once well to do in Pakistan, but fractured by the political changes suffered by that country, a lad who goes to America to attend Princeton University where he transforms himself into an 'American stance', performs exceedingly well academically, and joins the wealthy American classmates on jaunts where he encounters the beautiful but mysteriously aloof Erica. Changez and Erica become friends and were it not for Erica's recovering from a loss of her previous lover Chris who died of cancer, the two seem to be destined to become lovers. Erica is from a wealthy family who accepts Changez even more readily when upon graduation he is awarded a position with the prestigious firm Underwood Samson. Changez learns the feeling of the American preoccupation with success and wealth while still being committed to his family ties in Pakistan. While Changez is on a business trip to Manila he watches the 9/11 event and he is surprised that he feels a bit happy that haughty America is being brought to her feet.

Changez returns home finding his physical appearance now a cause for suspicion in the bruised country that afforded him success. He attempts to stay connected with Erica but Erica has retreated into her fragile state of melancholia and is eventually hospitalized. Changez continues his successful climb up the American dream ladder of success until he meets a gentleman Juan-Bautista in Chile who admonishes him that his devotion to his work for American companies might force him to forget the importance of home and family. Changez is changed and his decision regarding his employment, his lack of knowledge of Erica's whereabouts, and his growing anger at America preemptive attacks on countries near his home - all result in his returning to Pakistan, and the encounter with the American at the cafe. And Hamid leaves us there, afloat on a sea of questions and new information about the people we have been attacking and the result is a pungent experience in re-thinking the global atmosphere.

The book is relatively short (184 pages) and since it is written as one extended conversation, it is next to impossible not to read the entire book at one sitting: leaving the story even for a moment would be like leaving a personal encounter - rude. The story is superb, written with facile elegance, and contains views from outside our cloistered world that refreshingly informs us to re-examine our point of view. Highly Recommended on every level. Grady Harp, June 07

I really enjoy Mohsin Hamid's writing style. This is the second book of his I've read. He really draws you along in the story, and writes clearly and concisely. No extraneous words to get in the way of enjoying the story line.

There are a number of positive reviews of Mohsin Hamid's novel and the author Kiran Desai calls it "brilliant." With all due respect, I think Mr. Desai needs to read a little more. It was not one but two of these kinds of reviews that led me to this story and it is definitely an interesting story. Hamid skillfully creates interesting characters and a narrative that keeps the reader engaged, which is not an easy thing given the structural nature of using his lead character's autobiographical monologue as the narrative method. It's a well-told tale that follows the Aristotelian rules of drama but then there is the problem of the ending or maybe the fact that there really isn't an ending. Hamid decided to leave it unclear as to how the story ends and while this might not be a problem for some readers, I found it disappointing. It reminded me of Peggy Lee's rendition of the Leiber-Stoller song Is That All There is? Maybe there will be a sequel so we can figure out how the story ended. Maybe that was the plan all along.

Fascinating read. Really creative, inventive writing and a look at America from another cultural perspective. Read it in one afternoon. Much to think about, especially how belief systems, I.e., religion control how we see the world.

I am drawn into Hamid's dark world always. His writing is superb and the cultural in your face of what is the hurry because I will tell you my tale in due course and in my own time not yours is well woven through his story. I was disappointed in the ending or maybe just not expecting it so quickly.

The novel starts with great promise. The story teller has a beautiful, engaging voice. Pretty soon, the thing starts becoming predictable. Then tedious. By the end of the novel I was annoyed. A week after finishing it I was more than irked. It just didn't do it for me. But the writing was so fresh that I plan to buy, "How to get filthy rich..."

The writing is taut and crisp, the novel flows smoothly and succeeds in holding your interest. Thats the only positive thing I can say about this book. The writer talks about politics and the destruction wrought by America(according to him) throughout the world, but his understanding of politics is no better than a man on the street in Pakistan or India, the usual tiring left wing rant against American Imperialism, global domination etc etc. If you hold those views, you might sympathize with the author.
In December 2002, some armed terrorists attacked India's parliament. India claims they were supported and financed by Pakistan. A strong response by India led to the possibility of an armed confrontation between India and Pakistan. Both the countries amassed millions of troops across the border(though India began the troop movement first). America played a generally constructive role in defusing the crisis by pressurizing both India and Pakistan to tone down the rhetoric. The authors interpretation of this episode is that America tacitly encouraged India to coerce and threaten Pakistan. This is wrong and a hysterical interpretation. It is also banal and cheap, I would have expected better from a Princeton educated writer.
The author says he shook with rage when America invaded Afganisthan(among other reasons),because Afganisthan was a 'fellow Muslim' country. Why this tribalism? Does he not see the reasons why America invaded Afganisthan? I am not going over the reasons myself.( I should have used the phrase 'the main character of the novel' instead of 'the author' in this review, but there are reasons to believe that the authors views are not that different). I could go on writing, but, in summary, this book is an anti American rant and (mind you) it is a crude, cheap anti American rant, not a sophisticated one. I can cite several books on "American Imperialism" which are better written or more carefully argued than this book(not that I bought the arguments in those books, but it could be worth reading to know about the debate). The opinions of the main character of this book are so stereotypical and lacking in any sense of complexity, that I doubt anyone should want to waste their time reading drivel like this.
The authors initial reaction to September 11th was to be 'remarkably pleased' because somebody had so visibly brought America to her knees.(Pg 72). Really? I am ready to utilize my meagre savings to buy him a ticket back to Pakistan. I am surprised that a book like this has been shortlisted for the 'Booker Prize'. It seems that for some European liberals, being anti American(even in the most predictable and banal ways)is more important than literary merit.

Instead of dwelling on the plot points of this book, since there seems to be disagreement about what the author was conveying, please read this book because it is beautifully written. The first person narrative is the best I've seen in a long time. Not many authors would choose to write in this style. If you enjoy a well-written book and have an open mind regarding the transformation of Changez, this is one you should not miss.

The pose is gentle and enticing and you are drawn in like a spider wants you to as you walk unaware into its web. That is how I felt as I was reading the book: tentative and wondering as the plot unfolded. I loved the ending: a journey of life's coincidences and sharp turning points that could so easily change our course forever; or is it forever. A touching love story or was it. very enticing and I am sure each reader will get something different from what I got out of the novel. A lot left to the imagination, but I like that a story teller allows the space for you to create your own scene.

I was hooked at the first page. I love the narrator's style: you are the listener and can just imagine sitting opposite Changez in Lahore's Old Anarkali: definitely those who have been, and I hope also those who have not. Since, I believe, this book gives a wonderfully nuanced insight into the beautiful hospitable country Pakistan is and how external events and categorisations trigger in people emotions that are often misunderstood and which trigger further events into a vicious circle.

It is not a pessimistic book, but a personal recount which could lead to breaking the vicious circle of mistrust by bringing better understanding through a beautiful piece of prosa!

It was an interesting journey and the content itself interesting. BUT found the one sided dialogue style childish and tiresome. As well, the idea a perfect stranger would sit and listen to his life story even after being offended is flawed. Even Forrest Gump told his story to several people and he wasn't challenging anyone's ideology. I thought the ending was idiotic and amateurish rather than thought provoking that he was intending.

Set aside your personal political affiliation and views. I think more people would like the book if it revolved around some other terrorist act in another part of the world (rather than 9/11), some other conflict than this one that is so fresh on our minds.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a good story. If you focus on the relationships the main character has, the delivery style, and the substory that is happening in the "now", you will enjoy it. Hamid presents an interesting study on human behavior/sensibility and the pulls of nationalism and its duties. At one level, the characters act all the same, but for each their personal histories bubble to the surface and take their lives in wildly different directions. As others have said, the main character isn't so much reluctant as he is surprised by his own feelings.

This book is compelling on the 9/11 issue without being overbearing or preachy. In these times, that's a hard feat to pull off.

I liked the narration, and how the conceit of two men talking in a Lahore restaurant allowed Hamid to move from story to story, letting us know the events that shaped Changez's life. It's tough to describe how conflicted first generation immigrants feel when American actions cause strife in their homelands. But through Changez, Hamid shows the reader the many different motivations at play (Changez's family, his sense of alienation from American culture, the feeling of being an outsider). I am also from Pakistan, so the book resonated deeply with me. I've been in this country for almost 18 years. Even so, if Pakistan was to be attacked, I don't know that I could support the US. The conflicted feelings Changez experiences are likely more common than most would like to believe.

The narrative is well-paced and gives the reader little surprises at just the right moments. Particularly well done is the atmosphere of the Lahore tea shop. Hamid does a masterful job of conveying the lazy, but tense atmosphere present in many such places.

Finally, the story of Changez's love interest is a good bit of symbolism. Before 9/11, she's bubbly and joyous. After, she deteriorates and decays, unable to get over the problems of her past. In a lesser author's hand, this would have been heavy handed, but Hamid makes the depiction nuanced enough to make her a real character.

I am anxious to read Mr. Hamid's next book. Pakistan needs more authors like him.

This story (I wouldn't call it a book) hooked me right from the start. It's written in a dynamic and engaging mamma and I could not wait to see what would unfold next. I did find the monologue bits (in the cafe) slightly lacking in relevance but otherwise the story was great until the very end where the whole thing just fell apart for me. It's as if the author somewhat gave up on the plot and wanted to quickly finish it.

The narration of this book takes place over the course of a dinner shared by Changez,and an unidentified male American. Changez, a Princeton graduate, had secured a coveted job at a prestigious firm, Underwood Samson, determining the value of other businesses and was in love with Erica, who was in love with her deceased boyfriend.
The conversation was essentially a monologue of how Changez realized the rage he felt against America's imperialistic foreign policies. Following his joyful appreciation of 9/11, his life began to unravel, leading to his being fired from his job, and ultimately returning to his family in Lahore, Pakistan where he becomes a professor involved in anti-American rallies.
Changez' hold on reality is tenuous. In his desperation to connect with Erica, he offers to have her pretend he is her deceased lover. That is the second and last time they will make love. It is very clear that no matter what he felt about America, he would have stayed here had been able to win Erica's love. He couldn't and he turned his rage elsewhere. It made a very intelligent character, too transparent.
Through the conversation, Changez told the most intimate details to a man whose name he never used, and whose connection to him is never discussed. It didn't make sense.
The ending also left me cold.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I don't get many chances to read books these days because I write so many myself. This one just called to me when I saw it on the shelf.

Mohsin Hamid gives us an opportunity to enter a conversation between a Pakistani Muslim and an American as they dine in a restaurant in Lahore. We never hear the voice of the American, but we pick up hints about who he is and what he's doing.

From a big picture perspective, we see even more. We see a world at war, a world in which people have drawn a line in the sand and said, "Anyone on that side of the line is THEM. Anyone on this side of the line is US."

Reading Hamid's book, though, I was deeply struck by the reality that there is no THEM. There is only US. We human beings live in this world together. We are often dangerous animals, predators. But we are also lovers. Love flows from us like wine flows from bottles in Italy.

I really loved the book. I am very thankful I picked it up, and I thank you, Mohsin Hamid, for illuminating my Midwest American mind.

other reviewers have provided details about the book. I found in intellectually interesting and complex in a very good way. It held my interest throughout. The story starts with someone telling a story to a person across the table from him. It's a bit like a Heart of Darkness opening. The story is well told, interesting and relevant to today's world. I ended up getting Moth Smoke as well by this author because of the quality of this book. I find it interesting that we are seeing some really good literature coming from writers with a perspective we have never seen before (e.g.Kite Runner etc.). This one is definitely worth the time to read.

Allegorically interesting, but I didn't quite buy into the point of view -- I found the 1st person "overheard conversation" occasionally both jarring and implausible. Also, I'm afraid I found the ending a bit too clever-clever. I think if the author had tried to tell the tale more simply, he might have come closer to success.

I liked the writer's style. The whole book is written as a conversation between a pakistani national and an American tourist, set in Pakistan. It is a very easy read, maybe couple hours, and doesn't get into much details about anything which is good! I was a little disinterested towards the end because I felt the author had some trouble maintaining focus. But overall a decent read.

But I am not particularly appreciative about the way he writes about India being the big bully waiting to wage war against Pakistan. Oh well...

Oh my! This book is so good. It says the unthinkables. Perspective? Give me a break! This is the perspective that dare not speak it's name. Writing is sublime. Characterisation is immaculate, and for this mature white person, a little terrifying. Please, please read this provocative, thought-provoking book. I can't wait to discuss it with you. I'm changed.

The marketing department at Harcourt got it wrong. The title––The Reluctant Fundamentalist––doesn’t fit the story at all. It’s catchy, but wrong. While the main character might have been reluctant, he could hardly be described as a fundamentalist––even in the end. A better title would be The Making of a Terrorist or How I Lost My Love for America.

A Pakistani by the name of Changez (a not very subtle choice of names) invites an American to join him in a restaurant in Lahore where he relates the story of his life, from his family background, his years in the U.S., to his return to Pakistan. Interwoven with a poignant story about a woman he meets and falls in love with at Princeton is the tale of his disillusionment with America. The latter seems to have been brought about by an increasingly cynical attitude towards the profession his intelligence and hard work qualified him for and towards U.S. policy towards Pakistan.

While the story unfolds at a leisurely pace, it ends rapidly––so rapidly the reader isn’t sure what happened. Was Changez arrested or assassinated by the American, was the American assassinated by Changez’ friends, or did neither happen?

The question readers must ask themselves is whether this story paints a picture that describes a dilemma foreign students face when the come to the U.S. for schooling and subsequent careers or whether it’s just one person’s tale about which no generalizations can be drawn.

My guess is that the author intended the former and that many readers will agree. My problem with accepting that view is Changez’ relationship with Erica. She commits suicide despite Changez’ efforts to offer himself as a replacement for a high school love who died of cancer. That part of the story certainly cannot be generalized.

The part of the story that readers will try to generalize concerns Changez’ alienation from the company that hires him out of Princeton. Changez’ job at the Goldman Sachs look-alike is to help conduct financial analysis so that their clients can make business decisions. The cases Hamid describes have negative consequences for the companies being bought or sold, and eventually sick over Erica’s deteriorating condition which parallels Pakistan’s in its conflict with India, Changez resigns, returns to Pakistan, and becomes a radical.

The technique Hamid uses to tell the story is engaging. It is told in first person with the occasional reference to a question or remark by the listener. A consequence of this format is that the reader has no choice but to accept the storyteller’s view of events. Only if we keep in mind that this approach has been chosen consciously can we take a step back and ask ourselves to what extent is this story self-serving and whether other foreign students who came to the U.S. in the early 21st century would reach the same conclusions?

On first glance, "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mohsin Hamid appears to be about a brilliant young Pakistani national named Changez who finishes at the top of his class at Princeton and is hired by Underwood Samson, the most prestigious and world-famous corporate valuation firm based in New York City. We are encouraged by the title and the dark overtones of the dramatic monologue in which the book is narrated, to believe that somehow, by the end of the novel, Changez turns into a Muslim fundamentalist and implied terrorist. Wow, now that is a theme that really hits a bull's-eye with the American psyche!

Most Americans are sincerely confused by what is happening in the world today. We see rampant anti-Americanism, frightening Islamic terrorism, news of successful professionals being recruited into the ranks of the terrorists, and we can't imagine why. We hope to get inside the head of one of these characters and see the world from their point of view--perhaps finally understand what drives them to these drastic ends.

The book delivers on these issues and much more--very clever indeed! The monologue is narrated with spare, well-crafted prose that is often old-fashioned--and disconcerting. The archaic prose casts the story in a shroud of strangeness elevating the suspense and making the whole an unequivocal, unrelenting page-turner.

There is a marvelous linguistic and thematic trick built into that word "fundamentalist" used in the title and the text of the book. In the entire novel, religion is never once mentioned. Fundamentalism, in the context of terrorism, always refers to religious fundamentalism. But this book is not about a budding Muslim fundamentalist. So what type of fundamentalist is this, and why is he reluctant?

This is about a man fighting two inner battles: one moral and one political. In the beginning of his skyrocketing American dream career, Changez is temporarily blinded to one of his most ingrained core moral values: compassion. He comes from a family and a culture where people, no matter how poor, routinely celebrate their greatest joys by giving generously to the poor. When Changez comes home to Pakistan for a brief visit with his family, his mother dances ecstatically twirling a 100-rupee note over her head. What a wonderful image! Now, ask yourself how we in the West celebrate our greatest achievements and joys, and let this, and the other similar nuggets of open, cross-cultural insights peppered throughout this work, ignite your thinking about contemporary world issues!

In the beginning, Changez feels stirrings of compassion for the "soon-to-be-redundant workers" (p. 99) that will, no doubt, fall victim to his brilliantly accurate valuation analyses. Sensing this, Jim, Changez' corporate mentor at Underwood Samson, coaches him often to "focus on the fundamentals"--the bottom line, the numbers, don't let emotion or compassion get in the way. However, by the time the book draws to a close--when Changez is in Valparaiso, Chile helping valuate a troubled book publishing firm that spends too much of its assets publishing worthy academic, literary, and poetic books that eventually end up losing money for the firm--here Changez becomes the reluctant fundamentalist of the book's title. He can no longer focus only on the bottom line. He can no longer ignore the deep core of compassion that is his personal moral compass.

So, does he also become a fundamentalist terrorist? The author leaves that up to you to decide. The ending is deftly and provokingly ambiguous. But no matter which ending you choose to imagine--and you will vacillate--the overall cross-cultural thematic points have already been made, and that is what is important and what endures long after you've finished the book.

There is also the inner political battle that Changez undergoes during the course of the novel. He begins his job at Underwood Samson a few months before 9/11. How he reacts to that news, and how America changes in the wake of that news--both form crucial themes that resonate throughout. In many ways the book is about the dangers of not embracing change. The author and the main character find much fault with America's fundamental backwards-looking reaction after 9/11. Instead of trying to come to terms with how America must fundamentally change in the new post-9/11 world order, Changez sees Americans retreating back to an old-fashioned nostalgia for America, the righteous superpower, the imperialistic dominator of the globe. To Changez, America's self-righteous nostalgia is a terminal illness. To mirror this theme, there is lovely parallel story of Changez' love for the mentally fragile Erica. She fails precisely because she cannot free herself from her nostalgia for her dead former lover. She cannot move forward with her life, despite the fact that the reader can see very clearly that Changez and Erica have the makings of a truly enduring love.

So if America is failing to change, and Erica fails to change, what happens to Changez? He changes (change-ez)! [Is this, too, along with the word "fundamentalist," perhaps another linguistic thematic pun?] We the reader are left to figure out if the main character's change is for the better, or not. Thus the ambiguous ending leaves us wondering.

This novel is so clever! It really makes you think. It entertains with suspense as well as giving you an achingly beautiful love story--and underlying all is much to be learned about the current state of the world.

I recommend this book highly, as I also do one of the other top contenders for the 2007 Booker Prize, namely Ian McEwen's "On Chesil Beach." (I've also reviewed this book here on the store.) Personally, I hope Hamid's "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" will win. I believe it clearly deserves it.

I enjoy books that give me a different perspective. This didn't quite go that deep but I liked it nonetheless. If an author is going to condemn America, perhaps the character should have a stronger voice and give us legitimate examples of why the character feels that way. Good read though.

Moshid Hamid's book is a smoothly written tribute to the quality of his education at Princeton, but while it is at once enthralling and always entertaining, it fails to achieve the hallmarks of good literature. This is because it is basically a political tome rather than a serious attempt to illuminate the complexities of human nature or life in general. It is merely what it is: an attempt to explain the conflicted attitudes of a privileged Pakistani-American who ultimately recognizes the fact that his esteemed position in an enviable American global enterprise and his love affair with a rich American, are the results of his own arrogance, not unlike that of the typically ambitious and materialistic American. What propelled him out of the declining city of Lahore, was a desire to be somebody, to attain the American Dream, and for a time he pursues that goal with a determination akin to Gatsby. It is only after his rejection by a beautiful patrician American girl and her family and his realization that despite his success he is not really an insider in his profession either, that he withdraws to Lahore and becomes a "reluctant" fundamentalist. Whether his status is "reluctant" or the result of his anger at America and his rejection by the society that initially anointed him, is for the reader to decide.

It is as if Hamid had two books to write, and so he deftly leads us through the titillating experience with a self-absorbed, beautiful young woman, a classmate at Princeton. This part of the book is captivating and suspenseful as the reader watches Changze's tentative journey through the society life of New York City. Erica, whose beauty belies a troubled mind, uses Changze to deflect a deep-seated depression over her lover's death and an increasing obsession with death itself. As she spirals downward in her suicidal inclination, she regards Changze as her redeemer until she realizes that he cannot help her; no one can. She is the pampered American, so narcissistic and shallow despite her world-class education that she comes to represent for him all that is wrong with America. Certainly not to his credit, he then forsakes all hope America seemed to offer and takes up his sword against the vast global enemy of timeless values inherent in the Pakistani way of life. He becomes a "reluctant" fundamentalist, a clandestine operative, a professor who leads activists in a jihad against America. Once into this part of the book, the reader senses a formulaic approach that is predictable and somewhat shallow. Reading the newspapers could impart this perception to anyone who is interested, but Hamid employs accomplished dialogue and passages of anger to accomplish his dialectic. It is an interesting approach but lacking in depth and originality: a political tome, as I said, rather than an illuminating piece of "literature."

The book is derivative of Dostoyevsky's "Notes from Underground." The mocking voice, the antithetical statements, the pessimism, the ironic observations are all reminiscent of Dostoyevskian rhetoric, as is the fearful reaction of the listener, an American operative being led to his slaughter by the angry Changez. In a dark restaurant in Lahore, Changze proceeds to tell the American operative about his acceptance at Princeton, his hapless love affair, his disillusionment with his job and Americans in general and suggests the plight of the suspicious American, who keeps glancing at his cellphone and observing the scene around him, every bit as nervous and threatened as the raggedy Pakistani, who knows the enemy when he sees him despite the fact that he reassures the American, "I am a lover of America." Changez observes that the American appears to be on a "mission"; he thus has that driven quality Americans associate with a terrorist. "It takes one to know one," as the saying goes, and so as an American for a short time and a fundamentalist as well, like "Notes from Underground," the Pakistani persecutor pursues his vengeance from the beginning, knowing which fear buttons to push, which American icons to attack, what body language to use -- all in an attempt to dupe the American, who is as easy to deceive as were the university officials who admitted him to Princeton and the employers of the so-called "reluctant" fundamentalist, Changze. Right away the Pakistani notices the breeding, the patrician bearing of the agent/operative, and his bottled up anger is ignited once more. He refers to the "fake" masonry and architecture of Princeton University, arguably one of the most beautiful colleges in the world. He sees in the American a quest for "the perfect cup of tea," something familiar to self-indulgent spoiled Americans, not unlike the search for the perfect wine, at once bachanalian and hedonistic. It is the single most officious symptom of American self-indulgence. At the same time, he concedes that "Princeton made everything possible to me," and that means becoming enlightened and thus subsequently becoming a fundamentalist. Changez became a materialist only to realize that no matter how successful he became, he would never be an American in the most fundamental sense. He would never be entitled.

The author would suggest that he makes it chrystal clear that Changez rejects that sense of privilege granted by the rich and the bullies of global corporations in their name, but I would say what resonates in the book is Changze's jealousy of the American "haves." It is they who enjoy luxury and privilege while the rest of the "meritocracy," including him, is excluded from the inner circles of social acceptance. Changez could never really possess an Erica, not really. He knew "there was something elusive" about her from the first, but he is deceived by her neediness and mistaken due to his hubris and the seeming promise of the American Dream. When Changez admits his glee at the destruction of the Twin Towers, the reader realizes it is reminiscent of the scene revealed around the world on CNN, and he isn't surprised. Predictable and less than informative, the dialogue registers in the reader's mind, because it reminds him of the hatred fomenting in the Mideast; and whatever you want to say about America, most people here are not haters. "Reluctant"? Hmmm.... Changez expresses his satisfaction with the "symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees." He comes to this conclusion when he is still in love with an American. "Reluctant"? I think not.

The book is didactic, as observed in the previous quote. Changze further notes, "I had always resented the manner which America conducted its affairs in the world; your country's constant interference in the affairs of others was insufferable, Vietnam, Korea, the straits of Taiwan, etc." The book is at once a diatribe and a pieced together justification for hatred. Despite the fact that the woman he loved experienced a recurrence of her depression prompted by the infamous bombing of the Towers, he exults in the vengeance and humiliation symbolized by the attack. At the same time he deplores the anti-Arab sentiment evident in America. His own actions of growing a beard and leaving the country are suspect; Erica's parents do not encourage his visits or calls. He experiences a vague paranoia not unlike the emotion of the American sitting across from him later in Lahore, patiently taking in the man's hate-filled message. If the work is didactic, it is also simplistic and alas, predictable.

However, one can truthfully say that the book is smoothly written, suspenseful in parts and interesting because it is revealing of the fundamentalist mindset and culture as well as what it feels like to experience the privilege of attending Princeton while at the same time enduring the subtle prejudice manifested in the very legacy of the Ivy League and the condescension evident it its entitled majority.

In the final analysis, this is a predictable piece of political rhetoric, but it is smoothly written and interesting throughout. Disturbingly, it does reinforce our worst fears of what we're doing in our occupation of those far reaches of the world.

Marjorie Meyerle, reviewer
Colorado,
Author: Bread of Shame

This book is a great example for those who where around for 911 and for those who are too young to remember, but are interested in knowing what exactly happened in NYC during that time period, which also affected the rest of the world. The point of view of this text in exquisite and leads the reader to follow a young man's struggles in comprehending and deal with a changing world.

Mr. Hamid is to be commended for writing a page-turning book that engages the reader to finish it one sitting. The sparse wording manages to be very descriptive, and the plot, though far from a thriller, somehow hooks the reader into persistently reading one more page.

However, engaging readability does not excuse content. Perhap the insight is useful, to see how some who came America to drink of her milk and honey were thrilled and pleased that their adopted nation was brought low. I struggle to review a book that contains nauseating perversions of logic, when reading such a book might give insight to those who think in such a manner. It's like trying to give stars to Mein Kampf.

Without getting into political discourse, it's safe to say the book suffers in logic. For examples, the book excoriates America for meddling in every conflict. Within a few paragraphs, it then blames America for not threatening India with retaliation should they attack Pakistan.

The plot also fails in that it blames America for stereotyping a Muslim man who chooses to wear a beard...and then has said bearded Muslim man celebrate 9/11. There are many similar logic discontinuties.

The author did a good job of expressing divided loyalty and visceral identification with primary culture. A country is like a family in creating the sense of self. As a person who grew up in a culture different from my parents, I have a dual loyalty and understand the tension.

I am concerned about the ending. It seemed too simple and heavy handed in contrast to the complexity of the rest of the book. In a James Bond scene the author perpetuates the myth that Americans kill dissidents like countries without free elections, free speech or term limits do. (Think KGB,radioactive beverages, and oatmeal faces.) If America killed those who speak against those in power, we would have no one left at the Washington Post, The New York Times, the LA Times, the Philadephia Inquirer, the Detroit Free Press, CBS, NBC or ABC etc etc. Contrast that to what happened to Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. I have family member whose job it is to visit imprisoned journalists in Islamic and other States. There are no imprisoned journalists in the US last time I checked with Amnesty and PEN. In fact the NYT's is giving coordinates of Iranian dissidents. So this ending seemed unreal and unfair. I closed the book very depressed, thinking terrorists will feel further justified and the author will be responsible for more death.

It also made me think about the basis of racism being competetion for survival of the tribe, not only for cultural survival but survival of the ego and the genes, ie; sexual competetion. Although love and marriage occurs often between races, when a culture feels threatened like the US or Muslim States now, the wagons circle and individuals are seen through the filter of race, not individual personalites. (Even though you may like everyone more than your obnoxious loser brother and would never marry anyone like him, you will defend him with your life if he is threatened.)

A very interesting book. Written as a narrative from the viewpoint of the protagonist with an ending very open to interpretation. My Book Club read this and the resulting discussion was very interesting as we were split down the middle in terms of interpreting the outcome of the story. An excellent discussion-starter for our current international political situation.

In a recent article in The Washington Post" (7.22.07) titled "ROOTS OF RAGE: "Why Do They Hate Us?", Mohsin Hamid writes about an encounter at a book signing in Texas for "The Reluctant Fundamentalist." He was stopped cold when a man asked the subtitle question in a politely pleasant manner that put both author and reader in the "us" category. Hamid notes that he had spent almost half his life in the United States: emigrating from Lahore, Pakistan at the age of three with his father (who was accepted to a PhD program at Stanford), learning to sing "The Star Spangled Banner" before the Pakistan national anthem, playing baseball before cricket, writing English before Urdu, and other activities of a typical American kid. The question cut to the quick because in many ways he is, or it seems should be, one of us.

The Post piece goes on to lay out an autobiography which in considerable part became the plot of "The Reluctant Fundamentalist." Hamid returned to Lahore at the age of nine, growing up there pleasurably before the city was adversely impacted economically and culturally (strict morality codes, intimidation of politicians, academics, and journalists) by American backing of Pakistan's dictator Mohammed Zia ul-Haq in exchange for Zia's support of the mujaheddin, the Afghan guerrilla group fighting the Russian occupation which later became an American holy war adversary. Like the character Changez in the novel, he returned to the United States to attend Princeton University.

How much of the remainder of the book (Changez's outstanding performance in a business evaluation firm prior to being fired in debilitating disenchantment when he recognized the havoc his work was causing in the global workplace, the American girlfriend who ultimately fails him, et cetera) is unknown. But there is enough to support the notion that fiction, well written, can often articulate more basic truth than nonfiction. And "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" is brilliantly and beautifully written. There is no action (no bombs, no bullets, no noisy chaos) but there is suspense, gripping suspense (the feeling that something rather awful may happen at any moment), as Changez spends an evening over dinner telling his story to an American at a restaurant at a disquieting Lahore market. We never know the American's name or anything about him (whether businessman, tourist,, government agent)) except for his excruciating fear in the exotic foreign setting in which he finds himself. All this is conveyed through the narrative voice of Changez interpreting the American's reaction as the story unfolds.

The unnamed American is a stand-in, the nervous visitor in a strange foreign land, for all of us as we ponder the ghosts and goblins of the war on terror. Uneasy and watchful in that eerie marketplace, he could be any one of us anywhere. The girl with whom Changez falls in love is also, in a sense, a prototype for an America that cannot give up the memory of a dead lover (our nostalgia for the innocent security of a time that is past) and accept Changez for what he is: a smart, well-educated, if culturally different, Muslim foreigner who longs for acceptance.

In the Post article, Hamid answers the question of why they hate us as part envy and part reaction to American foreign policy. But his answer is less convincing that the one he offers to a reverse question, Why Do They Love Us?: "People abroad admire Americans not because they back foreign dictators but because they believe that all men and all women are created equal. That concept does not stop at the borders of the United States. . . .

"The challenge that the United States faces today boils down to a choice. It can insist on its primacy as a superpower, or it can accept the primacy of its values. If it chooses the former, it will heighten the resentment of foreigners and increase the likelihood of visiting disasters upon distant populations -- and vice versa. If it chooses the latter, it will discover something it appears to have forgotten: that the world is full of potential allies."

Readers of "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" will experience, at least for a few hours, some of the feelings of others across the world who are observing our fears and anxieties as we weigh the crucial choices which lie ahead. It could be time well spent.

This is a powerful strikingly honest narrative bringing to life the conflict between East and West in a way that is powerful and believable. The narrator's desire to become part of the US and his antipathy for what he sees as American elitism is the sea-saw on which the novel swings. There are many ambiguities leaving the reader much to think about. Powerfully written.

I do not want to write a review that might be termed a spoiler, giving away what little plot there is. But listening to this unctuous sermon like his silent American target makes me want to run to the nearest exit, thinking that at any moment the "hero" is going to erupt as a throat-slasher.
The title of the book is a masterstroke. It basically tells you where Changez stands, even if Changez does not know it himself.
The "heroine," Erica, is thrown up as a symbol of the Holy Grail, albeit Changez has no such beliefs: unattainable and totally shrouded in many layers of veil. She turns out to be a stick figure, without any personality.
The only humans with whom Changez interacts at all are his fellow workers at the super-firm by which he has been recruited. And they all end up as stick figures, as well.
And the person to whom he directs his monologue, a tall American who apparently is armed, never utters so much as a syllable.
I could write the sequel, in which Changez's allies behead the American on camera and we hear him scream as the knife slices through his throat. But that would make Changez into the unreluctant fundamentalist I take him for and would strip away whatever mystery the author has attempted to convey.

I can see why some people react viscerally to this book as an anti-American screed, especially in Bush's 'merica.

Okay, on to the book. Initially, I was interested in it because it was touted in at least one of the reviews as a monologue, and I enjoy novels written in this style; however, because the author uses quote marks around what the characters say, it's not an interior monologue in the purest sense.

I wish this book were written in that style. Shouldn't it be? Isn't the intent to bring the protagonist alive? What he does is important but what he thinks is even more important.

Putting quote marks around what the characters say creates, for me, a problem. I'm asked to accept the SUBJECTIVE observations of the narrator, but at times I'm asked to accept as fact that a certain action objectively occurred.

I do agree with the protagonist that firms such as Underwood and Samson ultimately are evil. The protagonist finds out that the Constitution doesn't apply in the workplace. A good point is raised because few people think about how unfair this is. Why should our civil liberties stop at the doorstep of a company?

I think the author chose names carefully in this book. Most people associate "Underwood" with the devil symbol on their line of canned goods. There's also a suggestion of "under"-handedness. The name "Samson" is associated with power. So, basically the company is a powerful devil.

Minor quibbles:

I don't like the metaphor of Princeton University as a slattern who "raises her skirts" and "shows good skin."

Also, two exclamation marks in one paragraph is at least one too many.

And there you have it.

If you are not moved beyond reason by this deeply thoughtful as well as lyrical and yet concise masterpiece, I don't know what to suggest. Like cognac, it has a bite, initially quite nasty in some cases, but then it lightens and blends and then even sharpens a moment; think of all the things we have all been through over 9/11 and how absolutely enlightening it is to get a very different perspective on the whole thing. I am reading it a second time and finding that there is not an extra word in this entire book. Can't wait to go find "Moth Smoke." I'm thinking of changing my own name to Changez. No small honor for an incrediblely dense yet light on the prose wonderful work of art. It may not last forever, as 9/11 and that precise emotional cargo this wonderful book speaks to, will be limited to those present at that specific moment, in the same way that the assasination of JFK will always live with some of us, as a before and after division in our lives. But this book speaks to so much more about how little we understand the world that we at times think we are qualified to rule. A delectable presentation of all of these issues, written in a superb manner. Devastating, to say the least.

Best book I've read in ages. Absolutely floored me. I was so into it that I read it at my desk at work because I had to find out what happened next.

Instantly jumps to the top of my list of books I recommend to other people.

I feel a kinship with this author as I am also a former finance-junkie (Partner in a Private Equity Firm) of South Asian descent before becoming a novelist when I wrote "Imposters at the Gate: A Novel about Private Equity". My "keyboard brother" has done a great job in grappling with issues of cultural identity and pointing out how corporate ideals are incongruent when applied to one's personal life. We see this when the mantra of the firm that his boss espouses, stick to the "fundamentals" provides a response in vast contrast to the firm's expectations when Changez applies this to his personal life. My novel pursues a similar story construct, but is ethically motivated and not politically. I'm looking forward to his future work.

Would you like to have some tea or coffee before you continue? By all means, please do. I sometimes have hot chocolate, but I cannot tell if you have a reliable source of quality hot chocolate nearby so I will not presume to tell you what you should drink, if anything. Although it is frequently said, where I come from, that we should all be drinking water. "Drink more water" they say. But that makes me pee all the time, so I often don't bother.

Yes, yes, I'm sorry, I forgot - you are busy and you asked me to be brief, so let me cut to the chase, so to speak. My opinion is that the book is a memorable one. The story will surely weave itself as easily into your mind as it did into mine. You might be surprised, as I was, by how clear the characters are drawn given the nauseating form of narrative employed.

Did I really say that? I guess I did. No, no, I didn't mean that you shouldn't read the book, by all means go ahead and read it. Buy it. Read it. Lend it to your friends. Put it on your shelf and pull it down again to read it repeatedly... as you prefer. But really, the second person singular? It's quite trying and a little tiresome.

Oh, you want to give it a chance, you think it can't be all that bad? Well, you're right. It's not all that bad. But it's not all that great either.

Indeed yes, by all means, please read some of the other reviews, I read some of them myself too you know, quite interesting. My hot chocolate? I finished it some time ago and it was quite delicious thank you. No, I don't like marshmellows. Strange that.

Indeed, me too. Bye for now...

Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a story within a story. One is the clever telling of the other.

At a café in Pakistan, a Pakistani man tells his story to an American man. The men are strangers. We learn about the Pakistani man through his narrative. The American remains a mystery man throughout. In paragraphs between parts of the Pakistani man's story are hints about the American man, the purpose of his encounter with the Pakistani man, and perhaps even the Pakistani man's purpose in telling his story.

In this short novel, the Pakistani man tells of coming to America to attend Princeton and then work for high wages at a New York company. He falls in love with an American who's in love with a dead person. But she's rich and gets him into all the right places. He's on his way to living the high life.

Then, surprise, he decides on 9/11 that he's disillusioned with America. And he decides that America is that big, bad, obnoxiously rich and power-hungry nation that waves its flag as if it can't get over itself and is stuck in some black-and-white movie. He smiles at the sight of the destruction of the Twin Towers.

I wouldn't have bothered reading more. But I had read so many reviews of The Reluctant Fundamentalist that were favorable and praised its suspense. I figured something must be about to happen that would justify all this, and it was such a short book I stuck with it.

The Pakistani man continues to describe his disillusionment with America and his doomed love affair. He goes on to explain why he is back in Pakistan and what he is doing there.

Where was the suspense? The mystery American?

The Pakistani man speaks of the necessity of knowing history but obviously knows little history himself. He complains more than once about the awful Americans invading Afghanistan for no reason and of Pakistan helping America but the Americans refusing to take their side when they go to war with India.

He, of course, doesn't mention the Taliban in Afghanistan and their promise of another 9/11. He also forgets (I don't know how since he lived there) that Pakistan and India have been going at it with each other for years and that this war with India was a frequent occurrence.

So the Pakistani man's story is told, and then comes the ambiguous end. My guess is one of two possibilities.

I can't recommend this book.

Some how did not feel as if I was reading a book which would provide a deeper insight to the conflict of fundamentalism. Of course the first hand narrative suggesting a chance meeting conversation in Lahore was stylish, but did not really go beyond that. Disappointing, but good style and form.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist gives an insight into the perspective of those who feel oppressed by US Foreign Policy and practice, in this case the people of Pakistan. The sense of hidden but imminent menace which pervades the book perhaps represents the threat felt by both sides and underpins the ongoing violence.

This book is absorbing and hard to put down. I read it in one afternoon. The plot is that of a young Pakistani who has gone through Princeton with complete financial aid and, as the author writes, "invited into the ranks of the meritocracy," by being hired by a top notch valuation firm in NYC. At first he fits in beautifully. Or does he? The initial interview with Jim from the firm makes him "uncomfortable," and "puts him off balance." And we find that he's been covering up the fact that he had to hold three jobs at Princeton. And when he's offered the job, he had the sense that perhaps this job would "transform my life." At first it did as he threw himself into it, impressing everyone with his intelligence and energy. But on the first project in Manila, before finding out about the 9/11 events, the narrator finds himself being stared at with hostility by a jitney driver. "...his dislike was so obvious, so intimate, that it got under my skin....I remained preoccupied with this matter far longer than I should have, pursuing several possibilities that all assumed--as their unconscious starting point--that he and I shared a sort of Third world sensibility." He then feels disconnected from his colleagues but again the work takes over and these feelings are forgotten until a day or so later when watching TV he sees the collapse of the WTC buildings. And one could say the life he has been living unravels from there and he ends up back in Pakistan talking to this mysterious American at a cafe in Lahore.

The feelings of alienation and confusion come across strongly in the author's writing. On one level you can read this book as a look at a Muslim experiencing the world after the events on 9/11. This will resonate with some readers and probably alienate others. On another level you can read it as the story of anyone who has moved from one world to another whether by changing countries, social class, or educational levels from the background they come from. Here it leaves the genre of "thriller" and becomes a very human story of one man trying to reconcile competing desires and values in a complex world.

The ending is ambiguous and I appreciated that. There are no cut and dried answers to the issues raised in the course of the evening's discussion.

My only criticism of the story is the almost uni-dimensional character of Erica. The dialogue between the two is often stilted and she basically comes across as not quite there. That's why I gave the book four stars.

This is a strange book, and I'm not even sure why I finished it, except that it is a short, fast read. The device of having Changez speak the whole time is odd. His love interest is just bizarre. He continues to pursue her, even though she clearly is emotionally unavailable. Finally, I could not figure out what happened at the very end of the book. I would really like to know if anyone thinks they know what happened in the final scene of the book.

OK, forget the plot if you can. It's flat-out unbelievable enough to have made me stop reading the book two times before I forced myself to finish it. Just call it the frame of the story within the story. That tale is mostly about the narrator's abject love for the heartbroken, pale, wealthy Erika who cannot forget her lover who died at 20 something of lung cancer. Lung cancer?? Yes, I suppose that it could happen. Still, the love affair has some nice moments although the fact that Changez (first time novelist's bad choice for a name) can't take the place of his dead American rival is an obvious plot device. So then what? The reader wants to know why an educated, well-paid Pakistani turns against the USA, right? You won't get much of an answer other than Erika, I'm afraid, and the anti-Muslim furor after 911. And you have to put up with the artificial story telling voice and the constant thought that no one in his right mind would keep listening to it, especially if he was sitting in a restaurant in Pakistan. Unless of course he was an evil CIA dude . . . Well, some critics believed him, the bleeding hearts.

I loved the way the story was told, and the viewpoint from a foreign perspective. Really makes you think about a lot of things. I thought, as I was reading, however, that I was lisrening to a man of middle age or older, and was very surprised to find the storyteller was 25. Could not stop reading!

The word amnazing is an over used adjective, but this one truly deserves all the applause; for those who like to empathize with real life like novel characters will definately find a real treat reading this first person narrative piece.

It took me a long time to make up my mind as to what rating I should give. The main reason for that was that this is an unusual book in many ways.

The book is written in the form of a narration by the main character, or rather it is a dialogue but we never hear the words of the person he is talking to. What the second character is doing or saying is clear, but we learn that from the main character. We do not know who this other person is.

At the end, the reader gets an inkling of what the other person may be or is about to do. But the reader has to come to their own conclusions. This is perhaps one attraction of the book, and for me the best one in that the reader has to think about what is being said and is happening and they may never know whether they have come to the right conclusions.

The title of the book is also interesting. Because of the current climate the word fundamentalist conjures up the image of a a person who is very fundamentalist about their religion, more often than not Islam. The significance of religion to Changez, the main character is never referred to. He in fact, believes in other fundamentals. This can be a shock to the reader because the title could have led the reader to believe that the book could be an analysis of how an individual can become a religious fundamentalist.

Mohsin Hamid is a very perceptive writer. There are very many themes intertwined in the narrative; what makes someone leave their country in Asia and become a successful employee in the United States; what are the adjustments and tensions for someone brought up in one culture and having to adapt to another one; what is it that brings about change in a person's thinking and values. There are many more.

This is a book that is easy to read but unlike many other works of fiction, it leaves the reader wanting to go back as there are many questions that need to be asked, and answered. When a book does this to a reader, the author must be very talented.

The main character in this book supposedly represents the Muslim perspective and grievances against the West, especially after September 11th. However, his behavior is so repugnant that I actually don't care about his fate one bit.

Yes, every immigrant to another country feels alienated and misunderstood sometimes, nothing so special about it. He got an elite education and a job, American girlfriend introduced him to her family and friends, yet this man could not feel any sadness for the horrible deaths of innocent civilians on September 11th. His selfishness and lack of concern for the feelings of others are horrendous. He viewed America the same way viewed the young woman, Erica, who was supposedly his romatic interest, as objects to satisfy his longing for validation of his "specialness".

Changez fantasizes about a relationship with Erica, even though she clearly told him that she was still grieving over her lost boyfriend and was not yet ready for a new romantic relationship, what she needed was a friend. Yet, unable to accept rejection, Changez forced himself on Erica with disastrous emotional consequences for her. The guy has no respect or consideration for other people's grief and pain. All he does is feeling sorry for himself, despite being given wonderful opportunities for education and carreer, opportunities that, in fact, only a few Americans get.

He decided to use his Princeton education to get a high paying, high power job. When he becomes disappointed with it, remarkably, he concludes that it is America that is at fault, that America is power hungry, as if he did not have other choices. I am sure that quite a few of Princeton graduates become human rights lawers, doctors, educators, join Peace Corps or pick a multitude of other wonderful life choices. The Changez's choice to regress into fundamentalism is more a testament to his own pathology then it is America's fault. Yes, there was more racism against Muslims in America after September 11th, but there were also the biggest anti-war demonstrations in New York and Washington, and multiple political movements for peace and justice, which he does not bother to acknowledge.

I do not agree with American foreign policy after September 11th, but I also have no sympathy for Changez, this selfish entitled prick.

There is no resolution in this book. The aura of threat, a kind of squirmishness pervades the monologue of a Prinston-trained, bearded Pakistani who has selected an American to share a table with and confront with his personal history regarding the present strife between our cultures. He is disarming with his gentility and the stranger appears to be armed with actual weaponry. It is a reasonable place to be hanging, as a reader, between the desire to make amends and the fear for our lives.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
This small book with large pretensions is thoroughly unsatisfying. The basic plot is conventional enough, to the point of triteness. A young Pakistani comes to America, experiences great success, falls in love with an unattainable troubled woman, decides that the American Dream is deeply flawed and corrupting, loses his love and returns, chastened, to his homeland. The supposed build-up of suspense to a shocking conclusion, the love story, the Pakistani and 9/11 backdrop, the world of high-finance, all strive to make this tale a little different. The tone is ambiguous from the outset, putting one in mind of LeCarre, even Rushdie, but Hamid is not worthy to tie the sandal the Master wears. The narrative method is an odd literary experiment, the whole 184 pages addressed directly by the narrator to his guest/nemesis/enemy/victim listener. The narrative breaks remind us that not only is the reader the audience, but the text itself has a listener, too. "What bad luck! The lights have gone. But why do you leap to your feet? Do not be alarmed, sir; as I mentioned before, fluctuations and blackouts are common in Pakistan. Really, you are overreacting; it is not yet so dark...." (60). If in Heart of Darkness every few pages Conrad had Marlow remind us that Marlow's story is being told after the fact, that Marlow has an audience within the book as well, the reader could not become so involved. Hamid's distancing, intended to build suspense, does not work, just as the story's conclusion does not work. The protagonist's reaching for the unattainable woman is much better told in An Equal Music, or Ground Beneath Her Feet. Erica the Firefly, the brief moment of fire in Changez's life is one of many jarring and heavy-handed symbolic touches. The prevailing mood is one of regret. "The ruins proclaim the building was beautiful", a Pakistani saying, is clearly meant to sum up all, the political subplot, the romance, the lives of all the key characters. In the end, however, this building, this novel, is not beautiful, just ruins.

The beginning of this novel set the stage for some terrific action. The main character, a Princeton graduate, takes up a job at a unique business that specializes in pricing other businesses. He has about all that an immigrant can ask for in the American dream, and with the nature of the title, you think that this is going to turn into some fantastic questioning about American values and capitalism. It was a great foundation that totally fell through. He hardly explores any doubts about what his loyalties are, and he never gives any indication about becoming a fundamentalist, much less a reluctant one. Don't be duped by the interesting title (like I was). There is no substance to this story.

Lots of reviews here already - both good and bad.

I just need to add my 5-star one. I loved this book.

Loved the writing style, the "story," the message, the fact that it gave me the NEED to keep reading and reading til i got to the end. Had everything - really - that i look for in a great book.

Adding it to "My Favorites" on WeRead.

An interesting tale, written in a cool way. Loved it!

One of the nagging questions of 9/11 is why successful, westernized, middle-class Saudis would fly airliners into buildings in support of a program that seeks to restore the caliphate. Ostensibly, The Reluctant Fundamentalist seeks to answer that question. It follows a young Pakistani from his admission to Princeton through his doomed love affair with an American woman and his career with a blue chip Wall Street firm to 9/11 and his eventual collaboration with unidentified elements of the Pakistani underground. But instead of penetrating and revealing the difficult terrain of a soul caught in deep contradiction, Mosin Hamid defaults to a superficial litany of anti-Americanisms masquerading as character development. The story-telling structure of the novel doesn't help much, forcing the antagonist into more and more supercilious positions. The one thing we in the West can be sure of is the difficulty of every decision made by flesh-and-blood Muslims caught between current realities and a life lived with dignity. Unfortunately, the political clichés of The Reluctant Fundamentalist bring us no closer to understanding the heart wrenching nature of those decisions or the small hope of dignity they provide.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is one of the most profound books I've ever had the pleasure to read. As a bookseller, I have personally sold over well over a hundred copies to customers. The book is just THAT GOOD!

With polished prose and clever style, a winner by the norms of contemporary fiction, Hamid strives for and may attain empathy for his narrator, Changez. The narrative is a not quite disclosed scheme against an unnamed narratee (a clumsy, insensitive American in Pakistan) as well as the reader, also addressed by Changez. I contend the author is himself trapped by doing so well at conventional literary skills in the maintained tone and style, covering over assumptions that could be questioned a bit.

Changez can be witty, warm-hearted, sardonic in his observations, his flashbacks to sojourns in a premier American university and profession, his descriptions of Lahore's local foods and people. As narrator, he's meant to spellbind both the narratee and reader, gain our understanding and empathy as he recounts crises of identity (even putting on a false identity during sex). From America, he eventually returned to Pakistan where he somehow underwent de-corruption and redemption (though this may come after whatever he does to the narratee). The novel means to dramatize the cultural and political polarities of the Pakistani and the unnamed man he talks to, who represents cultural and (possibly) military American imperialism, though it's a one-sided game.

The reader (if not the dumb narratee) need not be so spellbound. Breaking the narrative triangle, the reader may question Changez's prevailing nationalism and resentments. I didn't buy the tragic tone of Changez's prior displaced identity, his righteousness and superior self-possession. Not too far beneath the smooth surface, the narrative and narrator show a fundamentalist spirit, at its most brutal when Changez relishes the sight of slaughter of innocent people on 9/11. A more daring fiction maybe would have reversed roles: have Changez invited into the home or other context of an American who'd been murdered in the WTC that day.

I'd have liked to see some humor about Changez's plights with his rich employer and girlfriend. I'd have liked some challenge to the assumption that Pakistan is simply the victim of India, the USA, etc.

The book fits nicely into contemporary expectations for fiction. The movie version would be rated R. It would have handsome young actors, be shot in actual or authentic looking countries of origin.

A riveting narrative that ends so abruptly, yet brilliantly, this is certainly a book that lingers with you with it's post 9/11 views. I agree with another reviewer that at it's slim 180 pages or so, it's best to try and read it all in one sitting for maximum impact.

I read this book as a choice for a book club. It was a good read and prompted much discussion. It was interesting to read in that the author spoke as if in conversation. It also enlightened us as to the thinking and feelings of many of other cultures.

Easy reading with a gripping narrative in an interesting dialogue style. On reflection, interesting parallels between the narrator's relationship with the U.S and the girl he's enamored with. Leaves you guessing after the last page.

There are many tragic stories of American's struggle through 9/11, but it is altered as it is read through the experiences of a foreigner, as Moshin Hamid did with "The Reluctant Fundamentalist."

Set in New York, and occasionally Lahore, this book dives into the mind of a young Pakistani moving to America to make a living. The theme of this book could not be found for it was a random book, with no obvious direction, but the theme seems to try to tie in with 9/11, even if it focuses on more personal problems to the character.

There are mainly three characters, Changez, Erica, and the stranger to whom Changez is telling his story to. Changez is the main character, who is only trying to find his way in America in the beginning of the book. Erica is the girl who Changez falls in love with but she could not seem to love him back, for she could not get over a dead ex-boyfriend. Finally, the stranger is an American Changez had found in Lahore and had told this story to, the man is strange and mysterious, for he never talks, only pulls out his gun occasionally.

The book starts out slow as Changez meets the stranger and starts his story where he goes to Princeton, then to New York. He explains that he gets a job quickly and falls in love with Erica as soon as he meets her. She shows him around America and they start to fall in love while Changez moves up in his job. As they are getting closer, he goes on a trip for his job. While he is away, he watches the bombings on TV and couldn't help but feel happy, but he realized that Erica was still in New York, and it was easier for him to act that the crime was unforgivable around his coworkers. He went back a few days later.

Throughout the book, Changez would stop the story to have conversation with the stranger and how he should not be nervous around the people of Lahore. But he always continues his story, even if it does not have to do with the last place he had left off with. One of these times is as he explains his returning to New York. Erica and he had gotten closer after the incident, too close for Erica. With the love of Changez, Erica had been reminded of her ex-boyfriend and could not handle the memories, causing her to go to a mental institution. With this and the added stress of his family's well-being back home, Changez becomes unfocused on his job.

In the end of his story, Changez had lost job, but he didn't care because he had already decided that he was to go home. Before he left, he decided to visit Erica one last time, since he had not seen her for a very long time. As entered the institution, he learned that Erica had gone missing and they believed her to be dead. They had found her clothes folded up but no body, and, because of this, Changez left his jacket before he left. As he lived in Lahore, he became a teacher and a leader of protests. He told the stranger how he got in trouble but is fine now as they walked to the hotel. As the book ended, the waiter from the restaurant had followed them and the stranger had reached into his pocket for an object that glinted like metal.

As a high school student, I would not recommend this book to anyone. It was nicely written, but the story lacked point or direction. It was often confusing of whether the narrator was speaking about the story or talking to the stranger about whether he liked his food or not. It was a nice idea but the writer had gone through with it poorly.

Another reason why I would not recommend this book is because the book is a bit disturbing at parts. It did not hide any facts and delved deeper into Changez's and Erica's relationship than what was needed to be known. What Changez had been willing to do for Erica would have been sweet, if it had not been so disturbing and so obvious that it would only hurt Erica more than she already was.

In conclusion, I would not recommend this book to anyone. This book did not seem to have a theme or a reason. It had been confusing in the way it was written and had to be reread several times, even if I did not feel comfortable enough to read it the first time. This book seemed to be meant to show another view of 9/11, but it had done a poor job of this.

This book started out interesting, but went downhill as it went on. It had just enough to keep me reading rather than quit half way through, but overall I was disappointed. I kept expecting something to happen, but it never did.
A good book to read if you have some time to kill.

This was a pretty decent book. The story was intriguing and short.

My only complaint was the lack of any ending. It just seemed to end all of a sudden. Maybe I missed something...

It is short though, which often brings my score up greatly.

I found nothing original in this book, everything sounded familiar, and the whole sentimentality of Erica and her ending was predictable from the very beginning. Changez's subtle sarcastic commentaries about American politics, although I find truth in most of them, come across disingenuous. The events around him that lead him to make life changing decisions are not convincing at all and don't bring much understanding of, or empathy toward the protagonist.

I did not enjoy this book. Having said that, I'm not sure I was supposed to enjoy it. I did not like the monolog style of writing, the self absorbed (me first) point of view, the satisfaction he felt when 3000+ died on 9/11 or the silent stand in American he is always talking to.

I picked this up because it is required reading for my daughters college class this summer. The good news is that it is a two day read, even with beach naps thrown in.

My article review is "Read to the End" because the ending will grab you and give you something to interpret based on your own experiences and prejudices.

Like Kazuo Ishiguro's brilliant NEVER LET ME GO, this fantastic novel is one that you should finish before reading reviews since knowing too much of the plot will spoil this story for you. Also set aside enough time to finish THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST in one sitting for you will not be be able to put it down. I was hooked by page 4--the novel is slim, consisting of 184 pages but it is too rich and intense to be much longer-- when the narrator describes Princeton University as raising her skirt "for the corporate recruiters who came onto campus and--as you say in America--showed them some skin." About that narrator-- he is a Pakistani named Changez who is now 25 years old who is telling his story to an unnamed nervous American as they have a meal at a cafe in Lahore ("there is no need to reach under your jacket, I assume to grasp your wallet"). Educated at Princeton and the recipient of financial aid, he accepted a position at the high-powered financial firm of Underwood Samson immediately out of college and worked tirelessly, always achieving more than his elite American co-workers. He also fell in love with the beautiful but sad American Erica. He was in Manilla on assignment on that ignominious day of September 11 when his world, and those of many others, changed. Enough of the plot. Changez' extended dramatic monologue will affect you in many different ways. You will be at once sympathetic to this complex character but repelled by him.

Mr. Hamid's richly nuanced novel will keep you reading as the tension builds. He asks difficult questions that many of us would choose to avoid, specifically about the perception of the United States in the Middle East and other parts of the world as well and the reasons why we are hated so. In Changez he has created a character that you will not soon forget. The title of the novel speaks multitudes.

Without doubt this book has an intriguing plot, however it the writing that lets it down. The book is in the form of a first-person narrative, but is so amateurish and so jarring that I had to struggle to hold on to the plot. The writing really put me off.

The book begins in a cafe in Lahore, Pakistan where the narrator who is Pakistani is telling his story to an American visitor.
I also got the feeling that the author also shares some of the "hatred and despise" that the protagonist is supposed to have. There was a line in the book where the narrator asks the American guy if he has a lover back home "male/female". While to a western audience this may seem a non-issue, homosexuality is still considered taboo in South Asia. Only a South Asian reader can detect the mock in this line. The same question posed to the narrator would have been considered offensive! Maybe is wasn't the narrator, it was the author mocking the Americans.
In my opinion, the praise lavished on this book is out of a sense of being politically correct.

I am not shy about criticizing US foreign policy and our nation's hubris. There are many legitimate reasons to dislike the US government. This book is based on none of them. In contrast to millions of people around the world, the protagonist was issued a visa to come to the US, attended one of the top colleges in the US and was selected over hundreds of applicants for a plum US job with a high salary. He is surrounded by people who like him, look out for him and care for him. Yet when the 9/11 attacks happen, he smiles and is pleased. Why? He doesn't really say - it appears to be based on his personal, cultural identity crisis and a reference to American belligerence (which, though true, is not tied in personally to the protagonist at all). He seethes with anger when the US attacks the Taliban in Afghanistan. He apparently but inexplicably sympathizes with his murderous, iron-fisted, women-hating neighbors. This book seems to have been written in a hurry, the author neglecting to provide any legitimate foundation for the protagonist's antipathy to the US. Certainly it could have been done and the reader is truly left wondering why the author chose to omit history in favor of assuming that the reader would agree the protagonist's feelings were justified. It is particularly confusing when told from the viewpoint of a well-educated, supposedly intellectual man who should have seen that hard diplomacy is a much sharper weapon than violence.

I found the author's writing style (the protagonist speaking to a man with no voice and no apparent reason to be there other than as an excuse to poke more fun at Americans) annoying and disruptive of what little flow the book had. Another stylistic tool - the dash! - is ubiquitous and entirely distracting. Truly, this book could have been so much more had the author put more time (and perhaps research) into it. It could have been a bridge to explain to a mass audience Muslims' frustration with America. It utterly fails in this regard and in the end I fear it will only be used as fuel by those who believe that Islam is a violent faith.

I did not enjoy this book. Having said that, I'm not sure I was supposed to enjoy it. I did not like the monolog style of writing, the self absorbed (me first) point of view, the satisfaction he felt when 3000+ died on 9/11 or the silent stand in American he is always talking to.

I picked this up because it is required reading for my daughters college class this summer. The good news is that it is a two day read, even with beach naps thrown in.

My article review is "Read to the End" because the ending will grab you and give you something to interpret based on your own experiences and prejudices.