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| The Reluctant Fundamentalist | 
 enlarge | Author: Mohsin Hamid
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £14.99
Buy Used: £3.49
You Save: £11.50 (77%)
New (13) Collectible (1) from £4.36
Avg. Customer Rating:  60 reviews
Sales Rank: 47979
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0241143659
EAN: 9780241143650
ASIN: 0241143659
Publication Date: March 1, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Complete with an excellent dust jacket.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Great story, pity the narrative is so annoying June 15, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
An international bestseller that has been translated into some 16 languages, The Reluctant Fundamentalist has also been shortlisted for a host of literary awards including the Man Booker Prize 2007, the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2007 and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2008. But it has also attracted much flak centered around its alleged anti-American stance (it's no plot spoiler to say that the main character smiles when he sees the collapse of the World Trade Towers on TV, pleased because "someone had so visibly brought America to her knees").
In my opinion, this is shallow criticism, because the book's greatest failing is not its content, but the way in which the story is narrated. This is a fictional account of a young, intelligent and ambitious Pakistani who is educated at Princeton University and secures a highly desirable job in New York. When he falls in love with a troubled rich white girl he begins to realise that her material trappings cannot alleviate her pain. Then, following the attacks on the World Trade Centre, when the entire city is in mourning, he begins to question the purpose of his own life and the Western values that leave him feeling so cold, detached and unfulfilled. He returns to Lahore, and it is here that his story begins: a first-person narrative that is addressed to an unseen acquaintance (effectively you, the reader) in a little cafe as dusk descends.
It is this narrative device that I found particularly troublesome. The tone of the voice is cool, arrogant and slightly menacing, which is fine. But every now and then the narrative flow is interrupted by rather clunky direct addresses to the unseen acquaintance -- "But observe! A flower seller approaches. I will summon him to our table. You are not in the mood? Surely you cannot object to a single strand of jasmine buds." -- which act as unwanted reminders that you are reading a book which means you can never fully lose yourself in the story.
This is a great shame, because it's a good story about an issue not much discussed in popular literature, that of the foreign man who's turned his back on the American dream. If nothing else it's a thought-provoking read and would certainly make great fodder for a book group discussion, but on the whole I found The Reluctant Fundamentalist disappointing and nowhere near as exciting or as provocative as I had been lead to believe. And the conclusion, which is as predictable as they come, left me feeling like I'd been terribly short-changed.
 fundamental plod! June 10, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Not half as good as you are led to believe with all the hype. I kept waiting for the story to take off but it never did. All in all a fundamental plod!
 Easy reading with so many subtile in-depth analysis June 10, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was very pleasantly surprised that such an "easy reading" can be a delicate analysis of a modern American society. It is also a very good comparison between two different worlds that collide by accident and what I admire is the fact that no qualifier adjective has been used in order to depict either of the two cultures. It is rather the plot that gives a remarkable difference in the way of thinking and living, while giving the possibility to reader to make its own opinion which one of two is better suited for his/her living. Nonetheless, it is a sharp critic of American society and its values but put in a discourse that does not imply that it has to be by default a bad thing. Simply amazing!
A New Perspective on Fundamentalism June 5, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I had planned to read The Reluctant Fundamentalist out of sheer curiosity as to what made the character a reluctant fundamentalist and how that would manifest itself. On reading the book, I was delighted by the nuance and subtlety underlying the title of the book.
Mohsin Hamid's story is beautifully written and told by Changez, the main character and first person narrator whom some might consider unreliable, given the technique adopted by Hamid. The setting is Anarkali a district in Lahore, Pakistan. Changez, who has had the benefit of an Ivy League College education and subsequently employment with a trouble shooting company, meets an American, befriends him and over dinner Changez tells the story of his experience in America. Everything is seen through the eyes of Changez, even the tone and atmosphere of the story is created by him.
Superfically, it could be argued that the premise on which the novel is based is implausible. Two strangers meet for the first time and one allows the other to pour out his soul. Yet one of the great achievements of Hamid is that he was able to draw me into Changez's musings. The reader easily becomes a substitute for the American and is keen to listen to Changez. For me it was this that made the primise of the novel plausible. I don't know how Hamid did it but it is a great artistic achievement.
Hamid's technique is not new but it was certainly daring and risky to narrate the story in this manner, solely through the eyes of Changez. The techinque is reminiscence of that found in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness where Chalie Marlow, a first person narrator, spins a yarn to companions about his seafaring days. Like Marlow's story, I found Changez's story deeply touching.
The narrator's voice is calm, subtle, and nuanced - notice that the text is littered with parenthesis. Through this style Hamid allows Changez to reveal more about himself and tease out more information from the American than the bear bones of the text at first suggest. This was a clever use of tone and style.
The book is partly about the journeys people take, meet and form relationships with other people from different cultures, attempt to integrate and then become something new. This theme is summed up in a brief Proustian like passage thus: "Such journeys have convinced me that it is not always possible to restore one's boundaries after they have been blurred and made permeable by a relationship: try as we might, we cannot reconstitue ourselves as the autonomous beings we previously imagined ourselves to be. Something of us is now outside, and something of the outside is now within us."
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is also a mature and sober exploration of the impact of 9/11 on a Muslim 'outsider' desperately trying to find a place in American life. Through Changez's character, and his response to 9/11, Hamid shows that, as an outsider, despite efforts to integrate into another culture there might just be something deep within our psyche that, if only on a symbolic level, makes us hanker towards nationalism and narrow minded culture.
This is also a heart rending story. Changez is so desperate to fit into American life that he was prepared to suffer the foibles of unrequited love. However, of more interest to me is the story behind the person that Changez dotes upon. Erica's story serves as an acute counterpoint to Changez's. Like Changez, Erica is trying to redefine herself. For Erica the need to redefine herself is triggered by the loss of her childhood love, Chris, and a longing for things to be as they were. It stikes me that what Hamid has done with these two characters is, in different ways, highlight the human need for love and belonging. Given that this is a very short novel, the way Hamid goes about showing this human need and the fact that he pulls it off is a remarkable achievement.
Another dominant theme of the book is the notion of change and renewal - note the symbolism of the narrator's name, Changez and his professional role as an analyst and company trouble shooter. It asks how do we cope with and manage one of the inevitable features of life? Hamid cleverly explores change against the backdrop of micro events, eg, the personal life changing journeys undertaken by Changez and Erica, and also Macro events eg, the development of a post 9/11 world, the conflict between Pakistan and India and America's geo-political world dominance.
Incidentally, for those who might think that the title of novel refers simply to Muslim Fundamentalism you would be wrong. Hamid subtly explores the word fundamentalist in order to deconstruct it and remind us of its broader meaning and applicaion. One thing that emerges is that Changez is no reluctant Muslim fundamentalist rather it is in his chosen career that he behaves as a fundamentalist. The change he imposes upon organizations ultimately damages lives. Changez has his epiphany on an assignment in Chile when he meets the chief of a publishing company, Juan-Bautista. For a number of reasons Changez becomes disillusioned with his role and he realises that he is a reluctant fundamentalist. He tells us: "All I knew was that my days of focusing on fundamentals were done".
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a book that explores what we have in common as human beings and seeks to celebrate it. For such a short book Mohsin Hamid has pulled off a towering achievement. It deserved to be shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker prize and perhaps it should have won it. Please read the novel and be amazed by Hamid's achievement.
PS: For all of us expatriate British citizens let Changez's story be a reminder of our precarious status.
Poor and lacking insight and depth May 26, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The jacket blurb suggests that the narrator (Changez) is betrayed by the Western dream and a Western woman, but this is not a story about betrayal. It's a story about disillusionment and one man's growing disquiet with the way the USA conducts its international relations. And unfortunately, it's not a good story.
Hamid uses first person narration, which works well where Changez recounts his adventures in America, but when he jumps to the 'present day' where he adopts a monologue form, putting the reader into the role of an unnamed mysterious American. Hamid constantly has to lever in actions or the reader's imagined responses, emphasising the artificiality of the device. I also resented the role forced on me, which undermined the tension of those scenes.
Much of the book follows how Changez comes to work for a company that works out the value of other businesses, interspersed with his obsession with the damaged Erica, who has never got over the death of her boyfriend. Hamid wants to tie Changez's gradual realisation that he and Erica can never have the relationship that he wants, with his troubled contemplation of the impact his job has on the lives of others, all set against the backdrop of 9/11. It doesn't work. Whilst Changez is very self-analytical in looking at his relationship with Erica, he doesn't display the same analysis to his job so his opinion of American businesses and the US military feels superficial and glib and lacks insight into how and why they have their effect. There's no real depiction of how or why he adopts fundamantalist thinking - his return to Pakistan and his adoption of a teaching job is described in such benign terms that it's difficult to take him seriously as a potential threat to anyone.
Erica privileged background and self indulgence prevent her being sympathetict. She's written a novella, a form that she says: "leaves space for your thoughts to echo", in what seems to be a nod from Hamid as to the slight nature of this tale. Far from making my thoughts echo however, my thoughts wandered as I questioned whether Changez would ever get to the point. He doesn't.
Readers are going to love or hate the open ending to the book. For me, it felt like a cheap gimmick, one that tries to give the book a dramatic tension that it has not earned.
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