Book Review: The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York disrupted the world in a peculiar way. A country like America, the superpower of the world had been attacked by a third world country. It was not just an attack, a terrorist attack on the infrastructural aspect of the country but an attack which costed the lives of millions of people and traumatised generations to come.

Much of the world is aware about the American perspective to the terror attacks. However, the lives and safety of those who've left their homelands to follow the American dream were affected by the attacks too, but in a different way. Especially the ones from Muslim nations.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

The narrator of The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a 22 year old Pakistani immigrant in America, with a Princeton degree working in a coveted firm as a business analyst in New York. Changez is his name and his life is going well, with regular income and a love interest. But the setting of the novel is the Old Anarkali Bazaar of Lahore where Changez is conversing with a stranger, an American, and telling him what his life was in America and why he returned back to Pakistan.

His narration is descriptive and fluid. He talks about his university life, his life as a scholarship student in a class of elites, his background and his job interview. He also talks in detail about his more or less present love life with a girl who was dealing with her past. Life is going good but the 9/11 terrorist attacks make Changez question his reality and his sense of belongingness.

Changez was already coming to grips with his acute longing for his homeland, to be amongst his people. His duty and financial stability stopped him to dwell further on it but collapse of the WTC prompted him to rethink his situation and whether the country he's come to call his home is even his.

I'd say that the novel doesn't represent much of the difficulties faced by the Muslim or basically the bearded population in America and the discrimination faced by them. There are remarks here and there yet the protagonist is relatively safe from such instances. I'd emphasize that the novel, for me, was more about the internal struggle and loss of belongingness of an immigrant more than it's a commentary on the plight of immigrants post the attack. The protagonist is struggling to come to terms with his life in New York while his own homeland is in danger from an imminent war against India.

Moreover, this novel presented the stark realities (and perhaps hypocrisies) of countries like America to the forefront. According to Changez, America is a puppetmaster of sorts, meddling in everyone's business while the country rots inside with prejudice and discrimination. It acts as a superior regardless of whether someone considers it one. He even comments on the state Pakistan has brought itself into where the rich get richer while wealth is slowly diminished from the formerly wealthy and middle class.

I'd rate this novel a 7/10.

My reason for such a rating is because while I loved the 3rd world take on the political social conditions and reality, the addition of Changez and Erica's relationship, and the lengthy account of it was, for me, unnecessary. I feel the novel could've done without it or with less of it. But considering it's a monologue of a man and his internal dilemmas, it sort of suits the narrative too.

Four thousand years ago, we, the people of the Indus River basin, had cities that were laid out on grids and boasted underground sewers, while the ancestors of those who would invade and colonize America were illiterate barbarians. - Changez

That's all folks! Until next time!