The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid Review

A young Pakistani called Changez tells an unnamed American his life story as they leisurely sit at a restaurant in Lahore. How he once lived the American Dream - until 9/11 changed everything…

I really enjoyed the first quarter of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and then it hits a wall that it never recovers from before attempting a rather silly, melodramatic ending.

It’s a solid 50 or so opening pages. We hear about Changez’s Ivy League scholarship and getting a prestigious, high-paying job at a financial valuation firm right out of graduation - it’s well-written, compelling stuff.

Then the love interest is introduced and the story descends into a dreary romance between Changez and Erica, a woman who’s still in love with her dead ex. The narrative slogs onwards as the two predictably become closer, sapping any energy Hamid generated earlier in his novel.

This predictable, banal nonsense goes on for half the bloody book before anything further develops but the novel had lost me by that point. 9/11 happens and, whaddayaknowit, a brown-skinned Asian with a beard is suddenly persona non grata in America, and Changez becomes disenchanted with the country too with its subsequent actions. Warmongering imperialist hypocrisy is bad, eh? Woah… how totally not obvious an observation.

Despite being written in the second person, my least favourite narrative perspective, I didn’t mind it as much, which speaks to the strength of Hamid’s writing, although the novel’s contrived framing wears out its believability before the end. I just don’t buy that someone would entertain this overlong monologue from a total stranger for this length of time, especially with so much focus on him falling in love with an American girl.

I did kind of guess where it was headed - there had to be a point to why he was saying all this to an American specifically at this particular point in history - but I found what Changez did to position himself as the “fundamentalist” in the title was weak, and the ending, rather than being this dramatic finale, was more silly than anything.

Mohsin Hamid is a fine writer but I wasn’t taken with much of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Rather than being this searing, subversive and insightful polemical/thriller that I’d expected, it turned out to be a dull romance between two forgettable characters instead - disappointing stuff.