Mohsin Hamid, the former New Yorker and McKinsey consultant whose first novel, "Moth Smoke," got a lot of attention in 2000, is back with a new novel, "The Reluctant Fundamentalist,"
published by Harcourt in the U.S., and worldwide in 16 languages (filmmake Mira Nair calls it "a searing
and powerful account of a Pakistani in New York after 9/11")f. He embarks on a major U.S. tour in April. See details below. The publicist contact is michelle.blankenship[at]harcourt.com. More on the book at ReluctantFundamentalist.com. His personal site is MohsinHamid.com.
He has an op-ed in today's New York Times (which I noted earlier here).In "Pakistan's Silent Majority is Not to be Feared," he writes:
Rigged elections rankle, of course. But since then, secular, liberal Pakistanis like myself have seen many benefits from General Musharraf’s rule. My wife was an actress in “Jutt and Bond,” a popular Pakistani sitcom about a Punjabi folk hero and a debonair British agent. Her show was on one of the many private television channels that have been permitted to operate in the country, featuring everything from local rock music to a talk show whose host is a transvestite.
My sister, a journalism lecturer in Lahore, loves to tell me about the enormous growth in recent years in university financing, academic salaries and undergraduate enrollment. And my father, now retired but for much of his career a professor of economics, says he has never seen such a dynamic and exciting time in Pakistani higher education.
But there have been significant problems under General Musharraf, too.
Reax to the piece? Post your thoughts in the comments section below.
[ Blurbs ]
Advance Praise for The Reluctant Fundamentalist
by Mohsin Hamid
“I read Mohsin Hamid's THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST with increasing admiration. It is beautifully written – what a joy it is to find such intelligent prose, such clarity of thought and exposition – and superbly constructed. The author has managed to tighten the screw of suspense almost without our being aware it is happening, and the result is a tale of enormous tension. I read a lot of thrillers – or rather I start reading a lot of thrillers, and put most of them down – but this is more exciting than any thriller I've read for a long time, as well as being a subtle and elegant analysis of the state of our world today. I was enormously impressed.”
— Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy
“A brilliant book. With spooky restraint and masterful control, Hamid unpicks the underpinnings of the most recent episode of distrust between East and West. But this book does not merely excel in capturing a developing bitterness. The narrative is balanced by a love as powerful as the sinister forces gathering, even when it recedes into a phantom of hope. It is this balance, and the constant negotiation of the political with the personal, that creates a nuanced and complex portrait of a reluctant fundamentalist.”
— Kiran Desai, author of The Inheritance of Loss, 2006 Man Booker Prize winner
"A searing and powerful account of a Pakistani in New York after 9/11."
— Mira
Nair, director of The Namesake
"This novel's firm, steady, even beautiful voice proclaims the completeness of the soul
when personal and global issues are conjoined."
— Booklist (starred review)
“A superb cautionary tale, and a grim reminder of the continuing cost of
ethnic profiling, miscommunication and confrontation.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Hamid's second book (after Moth Smoke) is an intelligent and absorbing 9/11 novel….the damaged Changez comes off as honest and thoughtful, and his creator handles him with a sympathetic grace.”
— Publishers Weekly
“The novel succeeds in wrapping an exploration of the straining relationship between East and West in a gripping yarn, which remains taut until the final pages…The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an elegant and sharp indictment of the clouds of suspicion that now shroud our world.”
— The Observer
“Hamid handles his material deftly and stylishly to produce a multi-layered and thoroughly gripping book, which works as a poignant love story, a powerful dissection of how US imperialist machinations have turned so many people against the world’s superpower - and as a thriller that subtly ratchets up the nerve-jangling tension towards an explosive ending.”
— Metro
“An intelligent, highly engaging piece of work.”
— The Guardian
“An understated yet tense thriller, a painful multi-cultural romance and an examination of the perennial divisions between east and west all meet in this deceptively powerful depiction of the modern world.”
— Big Issue
‘This exquisitely measured story, as told by a Pakistani man, Changez, to an American stranger, is drum-tight with tension.’
— Good Housekeeping (UK edition)
“Hamid slowly and painstakingly builds Changez’ shift from complacency to fury at the US government’s treatment of his home country and her allies, not to mention his sense of personal alienation, this attitude reflecting the gradually eroding sympathy towards America in the wake of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
— The List
“[THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST] prods the intellect, quickens the pulse and captures the imagination.”
— The Sunday Times
[ Press release]
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.
At a café table in Lahore, Changez, now bearded and wearing traditional dress, converses with an uneasy American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful encounter … his story is that of a man at once deeply in love with and furious with America and explores the mutual suspicion and resentment with which the Muslim world and America look at one another. Is the young Pakistani a terrorist? Is the American stranger a spy?
The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Harcourt; April 3, 2007; ISBN 978-0-15-101304-3; $22.00; 192 pages) is a riveting, brilliantly unsettling exploration of the shadowy, unexpected connections between the political and the personal.
Mohsin Hamid
grew up in Lahore, Pakistan, and attended Princeton and Harvard. His
first novel, Moth Smoke, was a Betty Trask Award winner, PEN/
Hemingway Award finalist, and New York Times Notable Book of
the Year. His writing has also appeared in Time, The New York Times,
and other publications. He lives in London. Visit www.reluctantfundamentalist.com for more information.
[ Pitch to editors ]
"A searing and powerful account of a Pakistani in New York after 9/11."
—
The Namesake director Mira Nair on
“My Five Most Important Books,”
Newsweek
Dear Editor/Producer:
Much like the
narrator Changez in his new novel THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST (Harcourt;
April 3, 2007), Mohsin Hamid is a Pakistani man who grew
up in Lahore, went to college at Princeton, worked in a corporate firm
in New York, and felt compelled to return to Pakistan following the
events of 9/11, giving him the starting point to get inside the thoughts
of an “outsider” in the aftermath. Written in the form of an extended
monologue delivered by Changez, a foreigner who has embraced the Western
world only to find himself repulsed by it, the novel packs a powerful
punch that is nothing short of breathtaking. Hamid says, “By allowing
readers to feel what that man feels, I hope to show that the world is
more complicated than politicians and newspapers usually have time for.”
Hamid will be touring extensively throughout the U.S. in April. He makes for an eloquent and mesmerizing interview and can speak to many topics, including:
- The surprisingly prescient genesis of the novel - in 2000;
- His own experiences as a Pakistani living in London in the wake of 9/11 and increased racial profiling;
- The role of political insight and commentary in fiction;
- The difficult balance of including autobiographical elements in a controversial character, and his surprise that almost no one thinks to ask if the American character has autobiographical elements as well;
- The lures and dangers of nostalgia;
- Current political issues in Pakistan and how they affect what he writes about.
THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST by Mohsin Hamid is the book that everyone will be talking about this spring, thanks to its provocative, unsettling prose and surprise ending that will leave readers thinking long after the last page has been turned. If there is one book not to be missed this season, this is the one!
If you need additional information or would like to schedule an interview with the author, please feel free to contact me at michelle.blankenship[at]harcourt.com.
Sincerely,
Michelle Blankenship
Director of Publicity
[ U.S. tour schedule ]
TOUR SCHEDULE
Mohsin Hamid
The Reluctant FundamentalistPALO ALTO, CA
April 9, 2007
Pakistanis at Stanford
Stanford University
Time tk
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
April 10, 2007
The Booksmith
1644 Haight Street
7:00 p.m.
CORTE MADERA, CA
April 11, 2007
Barnes & Noble
313 Corte Madera Town Center
7:00 p.m.
SEATTLE, WA
April 12, 2007
Elliott Bay Book Company
101 South Main Street
7:30 p.m.
PORTLAND, OR
April 13, 2007
Powell’s Books
1005 West Burnside Street
7:30 p.m.
FORT LAUDERDALE, FL
April 15, 2007
Barnes & Noble
2051 North Federal Highway
1:00 p.m.
MIAMI, FL
April 16, 2007
Books & Books
265 Aragon Avenue
8:00 p.m.
CAMBRIDGE, MA
April 18, 2007
Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Avenue
6:30 p.m.
NEW YORK, NY
April 19, 2007
Barnes & Noble
Union Square
33 East 17th Street
7:00 p.m.
Joint reading with
Rory Stewart, author of The Places in Between and The Prince of the Marshes
Moderated by Philip Gourevitch
WASHINGTON, DC
April 20, 2007
Politics & Prose
5015 Connecticut Avenue
7:00 p.m.
PHILADELPHIA, PA
April 22, 2007
Philadelphia Book Festival
Details tk
12:00 p.m.
Joint event with Rory Stewart
DALLAS, TX
April 23, 2007
Barnes & Noble
7700 West Northwest Highway
7:00 p.m.
EDINA, MN
April 24, 2007
Barnes & Noble
3225 West 69th Street
7:30 p.m.
SKOKIE, IL
April 25, 2007
Barnes & Noble
55 Old Orchard Center
7:30 p.m.
Anyone who is naive enough - or hopeful enough - to believe, as Mohsin Hamid initially did, that the Musharraf coup d'etat in October 1999 held promise for Pakistan and its people, poetic justice demands should suffer
the kind of disillusionment and remorse that Mohsin Hamid now does. The
civilian governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif may have been all
that Mohsin Hamid says they were, but he should have remembered that the
cure for an inadequate democracy is more democracy, not less and, certainly,
not rule by military.
Khalid Hasan
Washington
Posted by: Khalid Hasan | March 27, 2007 at 11:04 PM
Depose Musharraf and divide Pakistan-- The Rand policy seems to be in play. The American policy makers need to either live peacefully with rest of the world or stop looking for Mercernaries to do their bidding.Ironically,while lamenting Musharraf's agreements with Frontier Tribes, I dont hear the U.S lambasting Israel to "DO MORE" after its failure to deliver in Lebanon. Perhaps a Martial Law would do fine to keep Benazir,Nawaz,the fundamentalists,and the wicked foreign perverts away so that the civil society can develop.
Posted by: Farooq Iftikhar | March 28, 2007 at 03:55 PM