The Reluctant Fundamentalist

(as recommended to 'Church Times' reading groups on 5th June 2009)

Mistaken identities

Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist is set in the atmosphere of suspicion following the 9/11 attacks

Jim Ottewill

• The Observer, Sunday 11 March 2007

The Reluctant Fundamentalist
by Mohsin Hamid

Hamish Hamilton £14.99, pp192

Mohsin Hamid's second novel is the story of a young Muslim man's loves and losses, daubed against the tumultuous backdrop of the political unrest that followed the attacks on the World Trade Centre on 9/11.

Changez is a young Pakistani who has risen to the top of American society: after graduating from Princeton, he secures a top job on Wall Street and falls in love with a beautiful American woman named Erica. But the collapse of the Twin Towers sends Changez spiralling to the depths of a paranoid crisis of identity. Where does he belong? New York? Lahore? More important, which side should he be fighting for?

During the course of the novel, set during a return visit to Lahore, Changez tells his story to a mysterious American. He explains how he has struggled against the suspicions cast on him where, despite his achievements and ostensible 'Americanness', the colour of his skin is a veil implying 'terrorist.' As afternoon turns to evening on the Lahore street, Hamid cleverly brews an air of simmering distrust between Changez and his listener, subtly juxtaposing light and dark. The novel succeeds in wrapping an exploration of the straining relationship between East and West in a gripping yarn, which remains taut until the final pages.

In the wake of 9/11, the international political landscape has become warped through mutual distrust and political hyperbole. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an elegant and sharp indictment of the clouds of suspicion that now shroud our world.