Browsing through books in library or bookstores can be a fulfilling activity and it can turn out to be bonus delight when you lay your hand on something and end up finishing it right there. Such that it does not linger on your mind later and the memory of it does not haunt you.
Something similar happened with Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It's a 200 odd pages book which thankfully I could finish in one sitting in roughly about 3 hours. I found the prose gentle, beautifully sensitive about the inner struggle of a person at places and never felt it whined for longer descriptions. You either relate, sympathize or simply understand the conflicting commotion he might be going through.
The story is about a young Pakistani man Changez and his growing turmoil in adapting to a full-fledged American way. He attends Princeton and goes on to join a prestigious firm where it is slowly leading him to immerse completely in to the American dream of wealth and success. His love affair happens to be with an American girl, Erica. Identity, perception of love in one's culture, turbulence in the process of belonging to your roots become even more intense because all this happens in the background of 9/11 attacks on US.
The sensitivity with which Hamid paints the love (or almost love or lack of) between Changez and Erica is elegant and beautifully sophisticated. His simmering anger over estrangement and victimization of identity that follows is felt throughout the story.
The story is moving and while being sympathetic to the catastrophe that hit America you are also made to see a viewpoint as an outsider from a country which may live in the wrath and growing animosity that would follow. This alternate viewpoint scurries over imperial capitalistic power and its serious repercussions and how it can dilute the sympathy on the other side of the line.
I would have loved to share few quotes from the book which made me move from mere glancing to finishing it but I do not have a copy of it with me but I found few reviews of the book online: here and here.
Something similar happened with Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It's a 200 odd pages book which thankfully I could finish in one sitting in roughly about 3 hours. I found the prose gentle, beautifully sensitive about the inner struggle of a person at places and never felt it whined for longer descriptions. You either relate, sympathize or simply understand the conflicting commotion he might be going through.
The story is about a young Pakistani man Changez and his growing turmoil in adapting to a full-fledged American way. He attends Princeton and goes on to join a prestigious firm where it is slowly leading him to immerse completely in to the American dream of wealth and success. His love affair happens to be with an American girl, Erica. Identity, perception of love in one's culture, turbulence in the process of belonging to your roots become even more intense because all this happens in the background of 9/11 attacks on US.
The sensitivity with which Hamid paints the love (or almost love or lack of) between Changez and Erica is elegant and beautifully sophisticated. His simmering anger over estrangement and victimization of identity that follows is felt throughout the story.
The story is moving and while being sympathetic to the catastrophe that hit America you are also made to see a viewpoint as an outsider from a country which may live in the wrath and growing animosity that would follow. This alternate viewpoint scurries over imperial capitalistic power and its serious repercussions and how it can dilute the sympathy on the other side of the line.
I would have loved to share few quotes from the book which made me move from mere glancing to finishing it but I do not have a copy of it with me but I found few reviews of the book online: here and here.
4 comments:
Nice review! Maybe I should read it too. Will be a great read after the monstrous 1500 pager I'm ploughing through now :-)
Thanks for the review! Have encountered several references to this book, but never got around to reading it. Am reading Jhumpa's Unaccustomed Earth, and I don't know if I have it in me to handle another tale of south-asian immigrant nostalgia. Perhaps a few reads later...
Juggler: Anything 1500 pager can't be good. I wish you shorter reads in future. Would be curious though of what it is.
Niranjan: I can completely understand. Jhumpa can do that to you, too detailed and drains you completely. I felt this only in Unaccustomed Earth though and not so much in Interpreter of Maladies. Can assure you that this one is easy on mind but no literary must that you must not miss.
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