The Reluctant Fundamentalist
by Mohsin Hamid
Hamish Hamilton, HK$176
In a small cafe in Lahore, Changez, a bearded Pakistani, initiates a dialogue with an American stranger. Noon morphs to night, the stranger stays silent, and Changez's monologue takes us from his days as a triumphant Princeton graduate to his work as a cutting-edge analyst with Underwood Samson, a firm that specialised in valuing companies for acquisition, to September 11 and a subsequent falling out with his adopted country.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a keenly observed examination of the chasm that opened up after the fall of the twin towers and the irrevocable change it wrought on many lives.
In Lahore, Changez hails from a middle-class family that's high on status but low on wealth. Intellect, hard work and frugality - essential ingredients for an immigrant's success - steer him to his American dream as he tops his class at Princeton, lands one of the most coveted jobs on campus, falls in love with beautiful Erica and starts work in New York, which feels, unexpectedly, like home. 'I was ... never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker.'
As he's initiated into high finance, he learns the mantra for success: focus on the fundamentals. His relationship with Erica progresses when he's invited to her Upper East Side home for dinner. In a subway car, his brown skin falls comfortably in the middle of the colour spectrum. Changez is on a high, despite the occasional blip: Erica is still mourning the death of her fiance; he bridles when people casually mention that 'Pakistanis have got some serious problems with fundamentalism'; his mind conjures troubling comparisons between the US and an increasingly decrepit Pakistan.