Keren Shlezinger - Mohsin Hamids The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Insight Text Guide

Keren Shlezinger

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Mohsin Hamid

Copyright Insight Publications

First published in 2010.

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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Hamid, Mohsin, 1971

Mohsin Hamids the reluctant fundamentalist : insight

text guide / by Keren Shlezinger.

9781921411670 (pbk.)

Insight text guide.

For secondary school age.

Pakistani AmericansFiction.

Race discriminationFiction.

Self-perceptionFiction.

Other Authors/Contributors: Shlezinger, Keren.

813.54

contents

CHARACTER MAP

OVERVIEW

About the author

Born in 1971 to an upper-class family in Lahore, Pakistan, Mohsin Hamid moved to California at age three when his father undertook a PhD program at Stanford University. At age nine, he returned to Pakistan and completed his secondary education at the Lahore American School. At 18, he returned to the United States to attend Princeton University in New Jersey, where he studied Creative Writing under award-winning novelists Joyce Carol Oates and Toni Morrison. After graduating with the equivalent of First Class Honours in 1993, Hamid returned to Pakistan to work on his first novel. Shortly after, he returned to America again, this time to attend Harvard Law School. After graduating in 1997, he began working at a management consulting firm and, like his narrator Changez, enjoyed a financially prosperous career in New York.

Shortly after his 30th birthday in 2001, Hamid decided to leave the United States for London. On September 11 of that same year, he watched with shock as terrorists targeted his former home across the Atlantic. He has since written that:

[l]ike many Bush-era self-exiles from the United States, I found that London combined much of what first attracted me to New York with a freedom America seemed to have lost in the paranoid years after 9/11 (Hamid 2009).

In London Hamid met his wife. They and their daughter returned to Pakistan to live in 2009.

As well as his novels, Hamid has also written much political and social commentary for publications, including The New York Times, the Paris Review and The Washington Post. Many relate to experiences of immigration, citizenship or migrant identity.

Synopsis

The Reluctant Fundamentalist unfolds over the period of a day as Changez, a returned Pakistani migrant, accosts an unnamed American man in the streets of Lahore. It is unclear whether the American is a mere tourist or an intelligence agent sent to assassinate Changez. At Changezs insistence, the two men share tea and a meal in the market place of Old Anarkali, before Changez accompanies the American to his hotel through the dark night streets.

The novel consists of a dramatic monologue in which Changez recounts in detail his experience of the United States, first as student and then in international finance. He tells how, despite his success, he experienced doubts about his role in America and about Americas role in the world.

Changez moves from his respected family in Lahore to New Jersey, where he has attained a scholarship for Princeton. Graduating with honours, Changez then secures a high-paying job at a valuation firm.

Between graduating and commencing his position at Underwood Samson, Changez holidays in Greece with his fellow Princetonians. Here, he falls in love with a troubled young American woman, Erica. Back in the United States, she introduces Changez to her wealthy parents, invites him to her home, and includes him in her elite lifestyle. However, Erica is traumatised by the death of her childhood sweetheart, Chris; although she feels affection for Changez, she most likely sees him as a shadow of her former lover. Unable to commit herself to a new relationship, she becomes increasingly introverted and depressed.

Soon after beginning at Underwood Samson, Changez goes to Manila on business. On the television in his hotel room, he witnesses the Twin Towers fall on September 11, 2001; his reaction is one of unsettling pleasure. This initial reaction gives way to confusion about his identity, about his feelings for the United States and about his involvement in Underwood Samson. In the following months, Ericas emotional and psychological deterioration, which precedes the collapse of their friendship, is mirrored in Changezs growing physical and ideological estrangement from the United States.

After returning to America from Manila, Changez visits his family in Pakistan. Once there, he can no longer ignore the fear and degradation they are experiencing as a result of foreign intervention and the threat of war from neighbouring India.

Upon returning to America, he refuses to shave off his beard: it is a symbol both of his individuality and of his Pakistani identity. He experiences discrimination in airports, in the workplace and in the streets. Meanwhile, Erica has become increasingly ill and has moved to a clinic.

Changezs disillusionment is evident to his boss at Underwood Samson. Jim still considers Changez valuable to the firm and sends him to Chile to assess an ailing publishing firm. But Changez, troubled by the political situation and preoccupied with Erica, is no longer charmed by the prestige of the company, nor passionate about his work. He neglects his task in order to follow Pakistani affairs online. Noticing his indifference, the chief of the publishing company confronts Changez and challenges the integrity of Underwood Samson as well as Changezs personal integrity. Their meeting is the catalyst for Changezs ultimate epiphany in the novel his resentment toward the United States, which had been growing since September 11, is now solidified, made palpable: he decides to abandon the assignment, knowing he will be fired from Underwood Samson, and thereby forfeit his American visa.

As he returns to New York to pack his things, Changez discovers that Erica has disappeared from the clinic, presumed to have committed suicide. Her mother gives him a copy of Ericas manuscript before he departs.

Upon return to Pakistan, Changez joins the university in Lahore, becomes a lecturer and an activist and protests against American foreign policy. The exact nature of Changezs activism remains ambiguous. As Changez finishes his story, he accompanies the American back to his hotel room. The final scene is left open-ended: the reader cannot know whether the American is a secret agent who will assassinate Changez; whether Changez himself is the threat; or whether it was indeed a chance meeting between an innocent Pakistani and an American tourist, who after the last page closes will safely go their separate ways.