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timpurches 's review for:
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
by Mohsin Hamid
I've just re-read this book (for a book club) twelve months after I was first given a copy. I was surprised how little of the story I could remember - in fact practically nothing. But my first reading had left a lasting impression, and that was the style of story telling. Unlike most novels, you just read the words of the narrator as he tells an American of how his time in the US led him to his current life back in his home city of Lahore. It's a simple but effective and engaging style and, along with the short length of the book, meant I easily read it in an enjoyable couple of hours.
The story itself is a pretty straight forward account of how a young and very smart Pakistani youth attends university in the States and embarks on what looks like a very successful career as a business analyst. But the events of 9/11, his loyalty to his homeland and a sense of injustice at America's "war on terror" lead him to abandon it all and return home. There his support for anti-American protests mark him out for attention, hence the conversation with what appears to be a rather incompetent undercover agent.
Intertwined with this story is an account of his doomed love affair with an young American woman. Despite their attraction, she remains in love with her childhood sweetheart, who had died of cancer. Her subsequent breakdown eventually leaves the narrator also pining for a love that will never be. I'm not sure if this is meant as some sort of metaphor for the rest of the story - if it was it was too subtle for me.
Notable is the total absence of religion from the book. Despite it's title, the narrator is in no way a fundamentalist, just someone motivated by a sense of injustice and loyalty to his native land. Perhaps the title is meant to show how a man who could well be portrayed as a fundamentalist by the West, is in reality driven by feelings we can all understand.
The story itself is a pretty straight forward account of how a young and very smart Pakistani youth attends university in the States and embarks on what looks like a very successful career as a business analyst. But the events of 9/11, his loyalty to his homeland and a sense of injustice at America's "war on terror" lead him to abandon it all and return home. There his support for anti-American protests mark him out for attention, hence the conversation with what appears to be a rather incompetent undercover agent.
Intertwined with this story is an account of his doomed love affair with an young American woman. Despite their attraction, she remains in love with her childhood sweetheart, who had died of cancer. Her subsequent breakdown eventually leaves the narrator also pining for a love that will never be. I'm not sure if this is meant as some sort of metaphor for the rest of the story - if it was it was too subtle for me.
Notable is the total absence of religion from the book. Despite it's title, the narrator is in no way a fundamentalist, just someone motivated by a sense of injustice and loyalty to his native land. Perhaps the title is meant to show how a man who could well be portrayed as a fundamentalist by the West, is in reality driven by feelings we can all understand.