BOOK REVIEW: The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid ★★★☆☆

Changrez is a middle-class Pakistani man, who sits at a café table in Lahore, conversing with an uneasy American stranger. Changrez tells him of his American dream lifestyle, his success at Princeton and at an elite valuation firm, Underwood Samson in New York, his romance with a white American woman Erica changed dramatically in the wake of September 11 Attack. Suddenly his position in NYC, his job and his relationship with Erica start to crumble. And Changrez questions his own identity, his loyalties that are more fundamental than money, power, and love.

WARNING. MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS.

So, what is a fundamentalist? ‘A person who’s in a religious movement is characterized by a strict belief in the literal interpretation of a religious text, of basic ideas or principles.’ With that in mind, I was able to dive into this book.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an astute, subtle insight in the published fictional form about 9/11’s repercussions. In less than two hundred pages, Hamid creates a compelling protagonist and a gripping argument of human connection, racism and patriotism. I was intrigued with Changrez;’s story and his willingness to open up about his experience with his love and hate relationship with America to a complete stranger.

I don’t usually like the second person narrative or dramatic monologues, but it suited this novella. In some places, it is a multi-layered, thoroughly gripping book. It’s a simple narrative with a deeply ambiguous ending. The narrative voice was formal without being serious and accurate without being rigid. Hamid has a way with his words when it comes to Changez’s many responses and descriptions as he narrates his tale in a Lahore bazaar.

I can assure you that everything I have told you thus far happened, for all intents and purposes, more or less as I have described.

The characters and themes can either make or break a story. I kept my expectations low for this story because I didn’t want to be disappointed if the story was bad. Initially, I wasn’t too hyped about the book or its characters, yet Hamid did a good job with shaping but not giving away too much detail. He shows a lonely stillness and wisdom at its heart.

For most of the novella, Changrez tells the American stranger his love for the United States, and his struggle to be accepted by his American friends and colleagues. After 9/11, his perspective about the United States changes and he faces increasing racism and discrimination from all sides (called an Arab, detained at the airport, harassed by a bigoted security officer, receives dirty looks from passer byes and making his colleagues uncomfortable when he grows out his beard). Back in Pakistan, his brother and father fear a war acceleration between Pakistan and an U.S.-backed India. His mother on the other hand, worries why her son won’t settle down.

His disappointments come about in a nuanced, progressive manner and you begin to empathise and understand the fundamentalist.

I stared as one — and then the other — of the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center collapses. And then I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased.

It is only when he meets a client in Chile, who describes Changez as a janissary, (a person who has been kidnapped and made to fight against his own culture) makes him realise how he would never be accepted. He anticipates and accepts his sacking at Underwood Sampson, leaves America and returns to Pakistan, where he becomes an anti-US lecturer.

There really could be no doubt; I was a modern-day janissary, a servant of the American empire at a time when it was invading a country with kinship to mine and was perhaps even colluding to ensure that my own country faced the threat of war. Of course I was struggling! Of course I felt torn!

Throughout the narration, Changez sometimes addresses the Stranger directly and his tone hovers between concern, civility, even care, with a hint of scorn for his Anti-US views. That said, we don’t know what kind of man Changez has become or could be trusted. Has he come to his anti-US views while still to an extent loving America, or whether he has become a terrorist?

The American stranger, who wears a Des Moines suite, never speaks in the book and our only impressions of him come from Changez’s remarks. So, it is unclear how much Changez can trust him. The stranger could be many things, a tourist, a government agent, or an American spy sent to investigate, apprehend, or even kill Changez.

In some stories, it isn’t essential to have a love story, but in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, it happens in tragic stance. Erica is a beautiful, popular Princeton graduate, who suffers from depression and mental illness, (which only develop after 9/11). It’s evident that Changez falls deeply in love with her, and although she may have strong feelings for him, she sees him as an exotic foreigner rather than a true friend or lover. Because of her obsessive nostalgia for Chris, (her childhood friend and dead boyfriend), she could never have a successful relationship with Changez (or anyone else). As he tells his story, he imagines with unrealistic hope that she would come back to him. The name Erica is contained within the word “America”, showing Changez’s ill-fated relationship with Erica can be seen as analogous to his ill-fated relationship to America.

Other character’s include, Jim, an executive vice president at Underwood Samson who identifies with Changez’s financial situation (as he was from an impoverished family). The waiter at the café, who is a member of a tribe victimized by America’s military, appears hostile and angry with the Stranger. Wainwright a non-white trainee and Changez’s friend at Underwood Samson, who drift apart after 9/11. Juan-Batista, the president of a Chilean publishing company that calls him a Janissary and the Jeepney (a kind of public bus) driver in Chile who stares angrily at Changez which triggers his increasing alienation from the United States.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist deals with many themes of racism, human connection, American patriotism and imperialism.

The novella shows how racism helps to create the very thing it fears. On the first page, Hamid shows how people judge one another based on their clothing, their skin colour, and their mannerisms. The Stranger is suspicious of Changez’s beard and clothing, while Changez sizes up the Stranger as an American based on his ignorant attitude in a foreign country. Even though his Princeton peers treat him respectfully, they show subtle racism by viewing him as an exotic commodity. He doesn’t defy or fight this soft racism as he wants to be accepted by Erica and his friends.

I did something in Manila I had never done before: I attempted to act and speak, as much as my dignity would permit, more like an American.

It is only after 9/11 Changez encounters more overt and hostile forms of racism in America that he refuses to back down from confrontations, and decides to appear more obviously foreign (the beard). Racism drives Changez from his beloved United States back to Pakistan, thus making him a critical fundamentalist of America.

Human connection is the next theme that stood out for me and it’s plastered throughout the novella. Hamid questions (in the face of racism and aggressive nationalism) if it is possible for two unlikely people to genuinely trust and respect one another. At Princeton, Changez felt like an outsider from his wealthy peers as he worked multiple jobs to support his family in Pakistan. Jim tries to connect with Changez through the basis of their impoverished families. In Pakistan, Changez yearns and is committed to connect and find any news or information about Erica, despite all evidence that such a connection is impossible.

Not, of course, that I actually believe I am having a relationship, in the normal sense of the term, with Erica at this moment, or that she will one day appear, smiling and bent against the weight of her backpack, to surprise me on my doorstep. But I am still young and see no need to marry another, and for now I am content to wait.

American Imperialism, the obsession with financial and military superpower are depicted in this novella. The power has ‘hard’ tremendous military force, and ‘soft’ to encourage foreigners to adopt American culture. If the Stranger is a secret agent sent halfway around the world to assassinate Changez, it reinforces the constant presence of U.S. imperialism.

After 9/11, Changez witnesses America’s military interventions in Pakistan; actions, that threaten his family’s safety, confirms how much of an outsider he is in America and returns to Pakistan to use his education to organize and educate anti-American demonstrators, to fight the American soft power that attracted him to Princeton in the first place.

"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 ..."

American patriotism & post-9/11 United States is shown from a foreigner’s point of view. After 9/11, Changez witnesses an increase of patriotism and patriotic obsession with the United States’ own past and purity—that affects him directly. Although he had thought that New York City had its own distinct culture, after the attack he sees the city join with the rest of the United States in forming a single culture whose most obvious characteristic is its hostility to non-Americans like Changez himself.

They all seemed to proclaim: We are America — not New York, which, in my opinion, means something quite different — the mightiest civilization the world has ever known; you have slighted us, beware our wrath.

Regardless of the patriotic alienation, Changez continued to love America, which had provided him with a first-rate education and job.

The ending was ambiguous. You don’t know if Changrez is luring the American into an ambush or he is having a genuine cross-cultural chat. The reader is forced to decide whether the stereotypes of terrorist and spy are, in this case, accurate, and, if they are, whether Changez has been driven to terrorism by the racism he encountered as an outsider in the United States.

Summary

Although it is a compelling argument, I have to give this a 3 star. I wasn’t really interested in the story, despite it being a novella with deep themes, but I kept going because I wanted to know who the mysterious American man was, only to find the ending very ambiguous. For those wanting to read post 9/11 fiction from a non-American point of view, who don’t mind a story within a story style, then give this quick The Reluctant Fundamentalist a read.

Rating: 3/5
Publishers: Penguin
Publication date: March 28th 2013 (first published 2007)
Genre: contemporary/Asian literature/post 9/11