Book Review: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The Reluctant Fundamentalist begins in a café in Lahore. A bearded Pakistani professor is in the company of an American man, he takes a sip of tea and begins to tell the American his life story and how he arrived at this fateful meeting. Flashback to the past and that same man, Changez Khan is hungry and driven young man committed to achieving the American dream in the United States. Fresh out of Princeton he gets a job with a hotshot valuation firm and quickly finds himself climbing the corporate ladder. However, when the tragedy of 9/11 strikes Changez finds himself becoming more defensive about his cultural identity in post 9/11 America.

Very few books have that unique ability to not only compel the reader but also move him and make him truly feel for the characters and the story. Mohsin Hamid’s gripping and mesmerizing ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ is such book and as soon as I started reading it, I found it very difficult to put it down until I had read the very last page. I suppose the greatest thing about this book for me is how it seamlessly blends the somewhat familiar rise and fall story with the 9/11 tragedy and in the process tells both a heartbreaking and utterly riveting story. Mohsin Hamid’s eloquent writing is really what makes this book what it is in my opinion. The story he aims to tell is undeniably ambitious but his grasp on character, story and plot is so tight, his writing, so fluent, that he never lets anything feel meandering or even the slightest bit dull. It truly is executed to perfection.

And another reason why I loved this book was because the story it tells it not only a timely one but also one that many Pakistanis and Muslims, for that matter can relate to. There’s no question that Muslims suffered greatly in the wake of the September 11 events, and The Reluctant Fundamentalist tells that story on a broadened canvas through the eyes of a Muslim man who sees just about everything slipping from his hands. There’s a sense of hope in Mohsin Hamid’s novel, a sense of hope always represented by the protagonist at various points in the story, but there’s also this really tragic undercurrent to the entire thing that makes this book both a heartfelt and profound piece of work. I found The Reluctant Fundamentalist to be a stirring and affecting novel which I would greatly recommend.