04 - The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid, Penguin, 209 pages, 2007
WHY I PICKED IT: Book Club
ELAPSED TIME: 3 Days
RATING: Good
This is an engrossing tale... told entirely in the first person. Changez is a Pakistani living in Lahore... telling the story of his experience in the USA to an American stranger in the market: From Princeton on scholarship, into the Manhattan corporate world, and his relationship with Erica, a girl from the Upper East Side (read: from old money). The struggle of a man from a formally wealthy Pakistani family, working hard to succeed in the USA, derided and derailed in the aftermath of September 2001 is compelling... despite written in the first person (which you would think would be hard to read).
The tale Changez tells is engrossing, but I am not sure I really understood the underlying "present day" tale that Hamid is telling us. Who is this American that sits for hours with a stranger and listens to the story? What else is going on, I really don't follow...?
This blog is a simple review of every book that I read... For all books I’ll tell you why I picked it, how long it took me to read it, and give it a rating (burn it, not good, meh, good, very good, and required reading). I ask (encourage?) all readers of my blog to post their thoughts of any of the books in my comments :). Thanks!
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