The Reluctant Fundamentalist

I read The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid while on vacation in Italy and thought it was really good. The book basically tells the story of a Pakistani man who comes to the US, attends a good university, gets a dream job in financial services in New York, falls in love with an American girl, and then abandons it all to return to his home country after 9/11. Although the story is a little contrived - the parallel between the man's failing romance with the girl and his failing romance with America is a little too obvious - it's really wonderfully written and a real page-turner. Given my ethnic background, how I went to a good school, moved to New York to do consulting, and was there on 9/11, much of the story felt familiar.

At its core, for me, it was really a story about identity in the U.S. Particularly about changing your identity here - the ability to transform from an immigrant or an outsider to one of the elite and how America post-9/11 developed an isolationist, fearful view of those that were different.

I thought there were some pretty insightful passages in the book that comment on people's behaviors. Here was my favorite one:

I hope you will not mind my saying so, but the frequency and purposefulness with which you glance about - a steady tick-tick-tick seeming to beat in your head as you move your gaze from one point to the next - brings to mind the behavior of an animal that has ventured too far from its lair and is now, in unfamiliar surroundings, uncertain whether it is predator or prey!

Come, relinquish your foreigner's sense of being watched. [Chapter 3]

Good book.

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