The Reluctant Fundamentalist

by Mohsin Hamid

At a café table in Lahore, a Pakistani man converses with a stranger. As dusk deepens to dark, he begins the tale that has brought him to this fateful meeting...
Among the brightest and best of his graduating class at Princeton, Changez is snapped up by an elite firm and thrives on New York and the intensity of his work. His infatuation with fragile Erica promises entree into Manhattan society on the exalted footing his own family once held back in Lahore. For a time, it seems as though nothing will stand in the way of Changez's meteoric rise to personal and professional success: the fulfilment of the immigrant's dream. But in the wake of September 11, he finds his position in the city he loves suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. Changez's own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and perhaps even love.

(From Publisher).

Mohsin Hamid grew up in Lahore, attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School and worked for several years as a management consultant in New York. His first novel, Moth Smoke, was published in ten languages, won a Betty Trask Award, and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. His essays and journalism have appeared in Time, the New York Times and the Guardian, among others. His latest novel is The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) published by Penguin. Mohsin Hamid currently lives, works and writes in London.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a cleverly constructed story of disenchantment with America about mutual prejudice and misrepresentation.

Powerfully written, a monologue of a Pakistani in New York City after September 11th 2001.

Hamid complicates issues that far too many simplify today. A story about creation of mistrust and revenge.

Mr Hamid's novel is told in monologue by a Pakistani man to an American over dinner in Lahore. What could have been a literary gimmick is a fascinating look into the love/hate relationship many immigrants have with the United States.