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A review by athenamangoes
Discontent and Its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York, and London by Mohsin Hamid
3.0
3.5/5
This was a solid collection of essays. I enjoyed them because they provided context and insight to Mohsin Hamid's fiction, which I've liked in the past. They were thoughtful while providing a complex/detailed look into modern Pakistan through a non-American lens.
With that in mind, as this is a collection of essays from his entire career, some essays were a bit repetitive. These essays are divided into three sections, Life, Art, and Politics, and I found that the final third dragged due to topic severity and essay density. While I understand why the essays were divided this way, I think it might have been beneficial to swap Art and Politics, just to break things up.
The reason I'm leaving this at 3 stars instead of rounding up is simply that this collection didn't wow me. I'm still a fan of his work, and will likely pick up whatever he publishes in the future, but I'll likely reread the essays I really liked rather than the entire collection.
This was a solid collection of essays. I enjoyed them because they provided context and insight to Mohsin Hamid's fiction, which I've liked in the past. They were thoughtful while providing a complex/detailed look into modern Pakistan through a non-American lens.
With that in mind, as this is a collection of essays from his entire career, some essays were a bit repetitive. These essays are divided into three sections, Life, Art, and Politics, and I found that the final third dragged due to topic severity and essay density. While I understand why the essays were divided this way, I think it might have been beneficial to swap Art and Politics, just to break things up.
The reason I'm leaving this at 3 stars instead of rounding up is simply that this collection didn't wow me. I'm still a fan of his work, and will likely pick up whatever he publishes in the future, but I'll likely reread the essays I really liked rather than the entire collection.