The Reluctant Fundamentalist » (Reprint)

While Mohsin Hamid was born in Lahore, Pakistan, his experiences overseas -- as a student at Princeton and Harvard Law School, a consultant in New York City, and a writer living in London -- have clearly informed his powerful, award-winning novels.

At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with an uneasy American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful encounter …

Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by the elite valuation firm of Underwood Samson. He thrives on the energy of New York, and his budding romance with elegant, beautiful Erica promises entry into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore.

But in the wake of September 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez’s own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a riveting, brilliantly unsettling exploration of the shadowy, unexpected connections between the political and the personal.

Booklist

Hamid's second novel succeeds so well it begs the question -- what other narrative format than a sustained monologue could have been as appropriate?