What Price the Fundamentals? (The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid)

Member Name: Puggers

Product:	The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid
Date:	12/11/09 (79 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Clever concept skillfully narrated, suitably ambiguous ending.

Disadvantages: Occasionally too clever, too neat.

Skillfully-composed, clever in execution - and only occasionally too much so for its own good - Mousin Hamed's The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a crafty novella that examines the east-west rift that has only deepened over the past decade. At one point in proceedings, our protagonist Changez is told of the Janissaries; Christian children taken by the Ottoman Empire and trained to fight unquestioningly against their own people. A Pakistani in New York, Changez begins to see himself in the same light, and question his own allegiances.

The story is told entirely in the form of Changez's monologue as he relates his tale to a slightly jumpy American stranger he meets in a café in downtown Lahore. Beginning with his arrival in the States as an undergraduate at Princeton, his is a story of a tragic love affair, with both a girl and a country. A high-achieving student who wins a role at a prestigious New York valuations firm, Changez is very much a young man on the up, achieving more and making greater sums of money than he had ever before thought possible.

His castle is to topple, of course - that much we gather early on. However, this relative-rags-to-riches-and-back-again tale (with a suitably enigmatic young lady thrown in for good measure) is only one aspect of the story. As the calendar flips over to the 11th of September, 2001, Changez is reminded that he is, for all his dollars and pretensions, still a stranger in a strange land, and is forced to ponder on his transient identity.

Mousin Hamed is an author who has trod much the same path as his character - geographically, at least - and this tells in his writing. In a crisp, calculated narrative which serves to further Changez's character the more with every finely-weighted sentence we feel a skilful blend of fantasy and reality - the character living his own, imagined life, but frequently following the author's after-image.

The narrative is certainly one of the most distinctive flavours of the book, and it's a tribute to Hamed's talents that 200 pages of monologue can be so thoroughly readable. Changez occasionally makes references to what the stranger is doing, or reacts to what he must have said (apparently for our benefit), but for the most part it's his story, told in his words while the mysterious stranger - and we do begin to wonder about the relationship between the two - sits back and listens.

Is this man really a stranger? Neither individual professes to know the other, but why have they fallen into this lengthy conversation that spans an evening in a Lahore café? Is he linked to Changez's story somehow? Hamed teases us with these questions, and ultimately delivers an ending that is bound to generate speculation - although it does feel like the conclusion has been thrown in purely for this purpose, as it relates a fraction unconvincingly to the rest of the story.

This is a short, sweet, clever book that might not endure too greatly in the memory, but makes an excellent impression at the time. Hamed's incisive narrative recalls the reserved regret of Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day, and the modern, thoroughly relevant setting gives the book a context that is likely to further provoke discussion about the story's connotations. There is too, depth beyond the story, with levels of metaphor and heaps of subtextual allusions that you can revel in or set aside as you choose. A neat second novel from a promising author with talent and vision, The Reluctant Fundamentalist rewards the eager reader.

Summary: In a cafe in Lahore, a Pakistani tells an American his story of love and loss.