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| The Reluctant Fundamentalist | 
 enlarge | Author: Mohsin Hamid
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £1.83
You Save: £6.16 (77%)
New (26) from £3.06
Avg. Customer Rating:  60 reviews
Sales Rank: 469
Media: Paperback
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0141029544
EAN: 9780141029542
ASIN: 0141029544
Publication Date: April 24, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Interesting if slightly thin novella September 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The narrator is a Pakistani meeting an American in a Pakistani restaurant. Through a dialogue in which we only hear the narrator's voice, we learn of his Ivy League education in America, his love for a fellow student, his employment with a leading management consultancy, and his increasing disillusionment with the US, catalysed by 9/11. As the novel comes to its ambiguous conclusion we increasingly understand the relationship between the narrator and his guest.
This is an intriguing novella, which portrays the feeling of place beautifully and is very skillful in building up tension through its extremely sparse prose. On the downside, I was left wanting more. Too much contemporary literature is turgid and obese, but this book is the opposite, I was left wanting more detail, more depth.
Recommended, but more next time please.
 Superficial and annoying, but the writer shows some promise September 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This was the choice for our reading group and I have to say that it is a huge missed opportunity. At a time when it would be interesting as well as useful to have an insight into the mind of the muslim minority, there is a definite need for an accomplished novel to portray the relationship and tensions between eastern and western mindsets. Unfortunately this book is not it.
It feels like no more than an attempt to make a fast buck out of a perceived gap in the market. It is short, written in an irritating narrative voice with a wholly unbelievable framing context that intrudes clumsily into a fairly plain and inconsequential tale of ragheads to riches.
I am not sure what point Hamid was trying to make in his too slight work. I am not even convinced he knew what the point of it was. the conversion from yuppy to fundamentalist is woefully underaccounted for and therefore hard to believe. And the sense of alienation experienced by the narrator is flimsy and seems to have more to do with class than ethnicity. At times Hamid openly cribs from the Great Gatsby, but such moments only go to show how much less of a writer he is than Fitzgerald.
Too much is passed over too quickly. Characters are little more than cyphers and Americans are largely dismissed as belonging to a single myopic social formation, with no sense of any debate within American culture. On the rare occasions when Hamid begins to develop a theme, he seems to give up the effort too easily and move on to safer, less demanding ground. It is no wonder that this lightweight book managed to find its way onto prize lists. It is so undemanding, yet waves a promise of something interesting in its cynical title. How could the cliterati resist?
For all that, one must congratulate Hamid on the ending, where the reader is left with a well contrived sense of the mutual mistrust of east and west.
 is he or isn't he? September 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A slight book and as a result easy to get through in one go and the style makes it a quick read too. if you ever wondered how it must have felt to be a Muslim in America after 9:11 then this begins to paint a picture of what must happen when mass hysteria sets in. It is not a sensationalist book by any means but it draws you step by step into a plausible account of one man's fall from grace in the Promised Land that is America as the scales drop from his eyes and he sees how others see his home country (Pakistan) and how far he has travelled from his roots. The ending keeps you guessing up to and beyond the last sentence.
Reluctant tp put it down August 31, 2008
I thoroughly enjoyed this shortish but beautifully written "monologue", which makes intriguing reading to the very last line. A modern day O Henry. The author develops a clear, logical but different perspective in the East vs West genre.
Brilliantly written and thought provoking book August 27, 2008
I would like to say that this book is brilliant, and my compliments to the author for such a fine piece of literature.
I must admit, I hadnt heard of it before I purchased it at the train station before a long journey; it's not my typical genre, but by the time I left the train, I had read most of it and was hooked.
I dont personaly think its a thriller at all. The element of the book that kept me turning the pages was the beautiful monologue writting style, and the fascination of hearing the inspiring life story of this book's main character.
Its hard to explain just how I was drawn into this book. The story of the life contained within could have belonged to anyone; yet it is because of who it belongs to that makes this story work so well. The study of the many faces of 'fundamentalism'is thought provoking, and works because of the subject examining is in such a position as to be unbiased - or at least far more educated than most.
The end is brilliant and while subtle, uncertain even (as is much of the book), it contains a strength of ideology that flows through the pages and gives the reader the inertia to keep reading and thinking, even after the book is closed.
5 stars
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