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A review by littletaiko
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid
4.0
Loved this book and am happy that it's an entrant in the Tournament of Books. This is written under the guise of being a self help book. Love the fact that it's told in second person and always directed at 'you'. In this case you is an Asian male and we see his life unfold from an early age through death. Each chapter is a self help book directive and the ever elusive pretty woman flits through most of the chapters. It's an honest look at what it takes to survive in an up and coming nation. While the protagonoist isn't really the most sympathetic of characters you can't help but feel for him on his journey. I rarely quote from books but a couple of passages really stood out to me.
"But when you read a book, what you are seeing are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create. It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each million different readings a book becomes one of a million different books..."
"We are all refugees from our childhoods. And so, we turn, among other things, to stories. To write a story, is to be a refugee from the state of refugees. Writers and readers seek a solution to the problem that time passes, that those who have gone are gone and those who will go, which is to say every one of us, will go. For there was a moment when anything was possible. And there will be a moment when nothing is possible. But in between we create."
"But when you read a book, what you are seeing are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create. It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each million different readings a book becomes one of a million different books..."
"We are all refugees from our childhoods. And so, we turn, among other things, to stories. To write a story, is to be a refugee from the state of refugees. Writers and readers seek a solution to the problem that time passes, that those who have gone are gone and those who will go, which is to say every one of us, will go. For there was a moment when anything was possible. And there will be a moment when nothing is possible. But in between we create."