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The Reluctant Fundamentalist |  | Author: Mohsin Hamid
Publisher: Mariner Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $1.99
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Seller: whypaymorebooks
Rating:  167 reviews
Sales Rank: 3064
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 208
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 0156034026
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780156034029
ASIN: 0156034026
Publication Date: April 14, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Mohsin Hamid's first novel, Moth Smoke, dealt with the confluence of personal and political themes, and his second, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, revisits that territory in the person of Changez, a young Pakistani. Told in a single monologue, the narrative never flags. Changez is by turns naive, sinister, unctuous, mildly threatening, overbearing, insulting, angry, resentful, and sad. He tells his story to a nameless, mysterious American who sits across from him at a Lahore cafe. Educated at Princeton, employed by a first-rate valuation firm, Changez was living the American dream, earning more money than he thought possible, caught up in the New York social scene and in love with a beautiful, wealthy, damaged girl. The romance is negligible; Erica is emotionally unavailable, endlessly grieving the death of her lifelong friend and boyfriend, Chris. Changez is in Manila on 9/11 and sees the towers come down on TV. He tells the American, "...I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased... I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees..." When he returns to New York, there is a palpable change in attitudes toward him, starting right at immigration. His name and his face render him suspect. Ongoing trouble between Pakistan and India urge Changez to return home for a visit, despite his parents' advice to stay where he is. While there, he realizes that he has changed in a way that shames him. "I was struck at first by how shabby our house appeared... I was saddened to find it in such a state... This was where I came from... and it smacked of lowliness." He exorcises that feeling and once again appreciates his home for its "unmistakable personality and idiosyncratic charm." While at home, he lets his beard grow. Advised to shave it, even by his mother, he refuses. It will be his line in the sand, his statement about who he is. His company sends him to Chile for another business valuation; his mind filled with the troubles in Pakistan and the U.S. involvement with India that keeps the pressure on. His work and the money he earns have been overtaken by resentment of the United States and all it stands for. Hamid's prose is filled with insight, subtly delivered: "I felt my age: an almost childlike twenty-two, rather than that permanent middle-age that attaches itself to the man who lives alone and supports himself by wearing a suit in a city not of his birth." In telling of the janissaries, Christian boys captured by Ottomans and trained to be soldiers in the Muslim Army, his Chilean host tells him: "The janissaries were always taken in childhood. It would have been far more difficult to devote themselves to their adopted empire, you see, if they had memories they could not forget." Changez cannot forget, and Hamid makes the reader understand that--and all that follows. --Valerie Ryan
A Conversation with Mohsin Hamid
 Set in modern-day Pakistan, Mohsin Hamid's debut novel, Moth Smoke, went on to win awards and was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His bold new novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is a daring, fast-paced monologue of a young Pakistani man telling his life story to a mysterious American stranger. It's a controversial look at the dark side of the American Dream, exploring the aftermath of 9/11, international unease, and the dangerous pull of nostalgia. Amazon.com senior editor Brad Thomas Parsons shared an e-mail exchange with Mohsin Hamid to talk about his powerful new book
Read the Amazon.com Interview with Mohsin Hamid
Product Description
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with an uneasy American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful encounter . . . Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by the elite valuation firm of Underwood Samson. He thrives on the energy of New York, and his budding romance with elegant, beautiful Erica promises entry into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore. But in the wake of september 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez’s own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 167
 a steal August 20, 2010
Dave
I bought this used for under 3 dollars and it was in perfect shape! It was a great purchase.
Great Service August 7, 2010
scout
Product arrived in a timely manner and in excellent condition. Great transaction. Would buy from this seller again.
 Read to the End August 5, 2010
#1 Volunteer
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.
A Great Book from a Promising Young Writer July 29, 2010
Olga Bezhanova (Edwardsville, IL)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Moshin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a really good book. I can't imagine I have gone so long without discovering this great writer. When the book came out in 2007, it apparently awakened a lot of strong emotions in the readers. In many cases, this strong emotional response obscured the beauty and the importance of this book.
The plot of The Reluctant Fundamentalist is quite simple. Changez, a young Pakistani who was educated at Princeton and worked on Wall Street, is telling his story to a nameless American he meets in a restaurant in Lahore. Changez is both fascinated and repelled by America that offered him an education and a lucrative job but at the same time, made his life intolerable in a multitude of ways. Changez's uneasy relationship with America is mirrored by his equally painful involvement with a woman called Erica. (As you can see, Hamid is quite heavy-handed with the way he names his characters. He makes his Erica-America parallel so obvious that it becomes annoying.)
When Changez first arrives in the US, he discovers that the opulence that surrounds him in his Ivy League school and his Wall Street job makes it difficult to maintain the same vision of national identity that he brought with him from home. He likes reminding himself that his people had created a complex and sophisticated civilization long before anubody heard of the United States.
As much as Changez prides himself on his people's glorious past and enjoys contrasting it with the recent historical origins of America, he has to rely on his American success to gain access to a social class his family was expelled from in Pakistan. For a while, Changez manages to swallow all the instances of discrimination he experiences. He also studiously avoids noticing the suffering of people who lose their jobs as a result of his professional activities. The reward for being an obedient little cog in the Wall Street machine is too high.
But then 9/11 comes and Changez cannot maintain his state of obliviousness any longer. His initial reaction to the events of 9/11 is complex, ranging from contentment to shame, and he explores it honestly. In the US, everything that has to do with 9/11 has been transformed into a holy cow of sorts. Any attempt to analyze what happened and how one reacted is branded as anti-American. Hamid's book received a lot of criticism for daring to discuss 9/11 in a way that is a little more profound than the official narrative. Unfortunately, those who insist that the only valid narrative of 9/11 is the simplistic one sold to us by George W. Bush don't realize that they are not doing us all any service by denying this hugely traumatic event the right to be explored in all its facets.
Hamid is just beginning as a writer and this is only his second novel. There is certain heavy-handedness that sometimes comes through in his writing. From time to time, he fails to recognize the moment when the writer should stop explaining himself and let the readers draw their own conclusions. He is also still searching for his own voice, and that's why there is quite a lot of V.S. Naipaul in the way he constructs his sentences and builds his plot. Still, these little flaws can be forgiven to an author who can create a book as beautiful as The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
In the recent decades, the writers from India and Pakistan have produced the best literature in the English language of anybody on the planet. Moshin Hamid is a wonderful addition to the pantheon of great writers from the region who keep literature in English alive.
I also wanted to add a couple of words about the Kindle edition of this book. Unfortunately, the Kindle version contains quite a few typos. You get a typo every other page and sometimes, there are 3-4 typos on a single page. The book is readable but it's very annoying to have a crucial word messed up. When you have to stop every once in a while and guess what a word means, that really breaks the flow of the reading process. I understand that the goal is to have every single book available on Kindle, but quality should not be sacrificed to this extent.
 It tells a story albeit rushed.. July 27, 2010
hushlinde (Southeast Asia)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This story is typical of many we have heard, read & watched about the effects of 9/11. It is but one perspective. The enjoyment is in how the story is being told, although you can guess from the start that it is not the setting the narrator suggests.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 167
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