The Reluctant Fundamentalist

I have been wanting to write a book review for sometime now, since I started reading again after almost an year’s hiatus. No particular reason why I stopped, but I know why I restarted – because my stupid laptop keeps breaking down !! I happened to read 3-4 books in the last month – mostly trashy, but this one was impactful. Don’t know if I will be able to write about all of them ...


The Reluctant Fundamentalist was published in 2007 – so its not a new book. Having read A Case of Exploding Mangoes and finding it not too bad, I wasn’t averse to sampling some more Pakistani authors. And wifey happened to bring it home one day, so I picked it up after she was done with it. It’s a rather slim book – you can easily finish it in a day if you have some free time – I needed just 2.5 hours.

But even in its 134 odd pages, Mohsin Hamid has woven a very engrossing story. It is not pulp fiction, but the story is as captivating and you wouldn’t want to put it down easily. The book is a first-person-narrative by Changez, a bearded Pakistani who randomly approaches a westerner sitting in a café and strikes up a conversation with him. Actually a monologue is the correct term because we can hear only Changez talking – he repeats the westerner’s questions for our benefit – before answering the question and carrying on. The setting is an open air cafe in Old Anarkali in Lahore.

Changez starts reminiscing about his education in American and we come to know that he is actually from a higher middle class family in Lahore, and won a full scholarship to Princeton. After graduation, he gets hired in one of the boutique consulting/investment banking firms Underwood Samson at a $80,000 per annum salary. Landing plum international assignments and finding love in Erica, he is well on his way to become one of America’s elites … till 9/11 happens.

However if you have images from Khuda Kay Liye in your head, banish those thoughts. Nothing dramatic happens. Mohsin Hamid seems to be a master of subtlety and the effect of the WTC events are very grey rather than black and white. The changes Changez undergoes and how do those events of 2001 connect to the conversation today is what the book is really about.

After finishing the book, I got the feeling that the book was intended for the westerners - to show them the point of view of the muslim (or atleast the Pakistani) world. And I think here the author falters a little. The reason provided by the author just didn’t cut it I thought … I would be interested to know if you feel the same way. I didn’t agree with the title of the book too – if anything, confused would be have been a more appropriate adjective than reluctant.

The ending of the book was a little abrupt and though you can conjecture what the most probable ending would be, there are quite a few other possibilities. For instance, if you change the name of the book to The Conversation or something, the ending of the story suddenly becomes very vague. However, that nitpick aside, it’s a wonderful short novel to immerse yourself in on an afternoon or in a flight …