On a spree of reading the books related to the scenarios faced by the world after the 9/11 attacks on WTC, recently I read a book “The reluctant Fundamantalist “ by a famous London based Pakistani Writer Mohsin Hameed.
It's a story of a graduate from the Princeton University narrated against the backdrop of the American invasion of Afghanistan.Defining the true and pragmatic meaning of fundamentalism, Hamid explains the inner psyche of a man whose country is gripped by the biggest turmoil of the time.And at the same time he tries to project the approach of the international community to the mayhem created by the America invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq.
Changez, the young hero of Hamid’s second novel feels a crisis over his own identity.Born in Pakistan , educated in Princeton and currently a new employee specializing in ruthless appraisals of ailing companies being targeted for takeover, Changez recognizes himself in the description “ I was a modern day janissary, a servant of the American Empire at a time when it was invading a country with a kinship to mine”.( In fact during the period of the Ottoman empire “the janissaries were the captured Christian boys trained to fight against their own people.”)
A process of inward transformation begins when Changez realizes that he was half gladdened by the WTC attacks. But as the New York comes together in the aftermath of 9/11 Changez is forced to face the doubts that are in his mind over the happenings in his home country and the increasing possibility of a war with India, as well as the inaction of the US with respect to Pakistan, which finally forces him to give up his bright career , to give up his pursuit of the beautiful and troubled Wasp princess Erica and go back to Lahore.
Back in Lahore , Changez becomes a bearded and generally reacculturated, where he meets an American in a restaurant in the old anarkali district and buttonholes him with his life story. In fact the novel is Changez’s monologue : a quietly told, cleverly constructed fable of infatuation and disenchantment with America, set on the treacherous fault lines of current east-west relations or we may call the Huntington’s clash of civilization. He seems to be pushed by the circumstances to make his ethnicity evident. An increasingly tense atmosphere arises between Changez and his American listener. But the conversation between the two transpires that the real fundamentalism at issue here is that of the US capitalism, specifically that practiced by Changez’s former employer in NY, “Underwood Samson” whose motto for globalization , is “Focus on the fundamentals”.
Changez summarises the experience of every happy Manhattan transplant when he says at one point:” I was in four and a half years , never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker.”
This axiomatic tendency gives the story a slightly abstracted quality. Now comes the relationship between Changez and Erica, a privileged patrician girl having a fair share of tragedies in her life. Her childhood sweetheart named Chris died in his teens. Her growing intimacy with Changez, interestingly free of the racial tensions is nevertheless thwarted by her inability to forget Chris or allow Changez to take his place. In the post-9/11 turbulence ,she starts to get disappeared into a powerful nostalgia, resulting in a breakdown ,hospitalization and probable suicide.
In the last Changez drops his sinuously self-depreciating manner towards the end , in favour of something more finger-waggingly polemical: “I had always resented the manner in which America conducted itself in the world; your country's constant interference in the affairs of others was insufferable. Vietnam, Korea, the straits of Taiwan.”
To sum up, this outstanding novel is a story about the two strangers on a footpath tea stall of New York, aPrinceton graduate working for a firm which can make him a millionaire overnight, a frustrated American girl who lost her boyfriend in her teens, America’s invasion of Afghanistan and a Pakistan’s own way of protesting. This is what Mohsin Hamid’s “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” is all about.
It's a story of a graduate from the Princeton University narrated against the backdrop of the American invasion of Afghanistan.Defining the true and pragmatic meaning of fundamentalism, Hamid explains the inner psyche of a man whose country is gripped by the biggest turmoil of the time.And at the same time he tries to project the approach of the international community to the mayhem created by the America invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq.
Changez, the young hero of Hamid’s second novel feels a crisis over his own identity.Born in Pakistan , educated in Princeton and currently a new employee specializing in ruthless appraisals of ailing companies being targeted for takeover, Changez recognizes himself in the description “ I was a modern day janissary, a servant of the American Empire at a time when it was invading a country with a kinship to mine”.( In fact during the period of the Ottoman empire “the janissaries were the captured Christian boys trained to fight against their own people.”)
A process of inward transformation begins when Changez realizes that he was half gladdened by the WTC attacks. But as the New York comes together in the aftermath of 9/11 Changez is forced to face the doubts that are in his mind over the happenings in his home country and the increasing possibility of a war with India, as well as the inaction of the US with respect to Pakistan, which finally forces him to give up his bright career , to give up his pursuit of the beautiful and troubled Wasp princess Erica and go back to Lahore.
Back in Lahore , Changez becomes a bearded and generally reacculturated, where he meets an American in a restaurant in the old anarkali district and buttonholes him with his life story. In fact the novel is Changez’s monologue : a quietly told, cleverly constructed fable of infatuation and disenchantment with America, set on the treacherous fault lines of current east-west relations or we may call the Huntington’s clash of civilization. He seems to be pushed by the circumstances to make his ethnicity evident. An increasingly tense atmosphere arises between Changez and his American listener. But the conversation between the two transpires that the real fundamentalism at issue here is that of the US capitalism, specifically that practiced by Changez’s former employer in NY, “Underwood Samson” whose motto for globalization , is “Focus on the fundamentals”.
Changez summarises the experience of every happy Manhattan transplant when he says at one point:” I was in four and a half years , never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker.”
This axiomatic tendency gives the story a slightly abstracted quality. Now comes the relationship between Changez and Erica, a privileged patrician girl having a fair share of tragedies in her life. Her childhood sweetheart named Chris died in his teens. Her growing intimacy with Changez, interestingly free of the racial tensions is nevertheless thwarted by her inability to forget Chris or allow Changez to take his place. In the post-9/11 turbulence ,she starts to get disappeared into a powerful nostalgia, resulting in a breakdown ,hospitalization and probable suicide.
In the last Changez drops his sinuously self-depreciating manner towards the end , in favour of something more finger-waggingly polemical: “I had always resented the manner in which America conducted itself in the world; your country's constant interference in the affairs of others was insufferable. Vietnam, Korea, the straits of Taiwan.”
To sum up, this outstanding novel is a story about the two strangers on a footpath tea stall of New York, aPrinceton graduate working for a firm which can make him a millionaire overnight, a frustrated American girl who lost her boyfriend in her teens, America’s invasion of Afghanistan and a Pakistan’s own way of protesting. This is what Mohsin Hamid’s “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” is all about.
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