Dear Students!

This is our third lecture and it is going to be on Mohsin

Hamid’s novel “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”. Ok I move to the outline…

Lecture3: Introduction to Mohsin Hamid’s “The Reluctant

Fundamentalist”

Slide1:
Outline:

 Biographical sketch of Mohsin Hamid

 Mohsin Hamid as a diasporic writer

 His importance as a novelist

 General introduction to the novel, its context and motives

 Significance of the title of the novel

Slide2:
Biographical sketch of Mohsin Hamid

Mohsin Hamid was born in 1971 to a Punjabi-Kashmiri family, Hamid spent part of his
childhood in the United States, where he stayed from the age of 3 to 9 while his father,
who was a university professor, was enrolled in a PhD program at Stanford University.
After his father’s PhD they moved back to Lahore, Pakistan, and where Hamid attended
the Lahore American School

At the age of 18, Hamid returned to the United States to continue his education. He
graduated from Princeton University with highest distinction in 1993. He studied here
under the writers Joyce Carol Oates and Toni Morrison. Hamid wrote the first draft of his
first novel for a fiction workshop taught by Morrison. He returned to Pakistan after
college to continue working on it.
Afterwards, Hamid attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 1997 but Finding
corporate law boring, he repaid his student loans by working for several years as
a management consultant at a company. During these days, he was allowed to take
three months off each year to write, and he used this time to complete his first
novel Moth Smoke.

Hamid moved to Lahore in 2009 with his wife Zahra and their daughter Dina. He now
divides his time between Pakistan and abroad, living between Lahore, New York,
London, and Mediterranean countries including Italy and Greece. Hamid has described
himself as a "mongrel and has said of his own writing that "a novel can often be a
divided man’s conversation with himself.

Slide2
Works:

Hamid's first novel, Moth Smoke, told the story of a drug-addict ex-banker in post-
nuclear-test Lahore who falls in love with his best friend's wife and becomes a heroin-
addict. It was published in 2000, and quickly became a cult hit in Pakistan and among
Indians who speak English. It was also a finalist for the PEN Hemingway Award given
to the best first novel in the US, and was adapted for television in Pakistan and as an
operetta in Italy.

Moth Smoke had an innovative structure, using multiple voices, second person trial
scenes, and essays on such topics as the role of air-conditioning in the lives of its main
characters. It was considered by some critics to be "the most interesting novel that
came out of [its] generation of subcontinent (English) writing.

His second novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is a "metafictional novel. Metafiction in

simple words means fiction about fiction. It is used in the sense that the fiction talks
about itself or that the story is self-conscious. Fictional elements are where the story
talks about itself or its elements. This novel tells the story of a Pakistani man who
decides to leave his high-flying life in America after a failed love affair and the terrorist
attacks of 9/11. It was published in 2007 and became a million-copy international best
seller, reaching No.4 on the New York Times Best Seller list. The novel was shortlisted
for the Booker Prize, and won several awards and was translated into over 25
languages.

Like Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist was formally experimental. The novel

used the unusual device of a dramatic monologue in which the Pakistani protagonist
continually addresses an American listener who is never heard from directly. (Hamid
has said The Fall by Albert Camus served as his model. According to one commentator,
states about his technique and I quote:

“May be we the readers are the ones who jump to conclusions; maybe the
book is intended as a Rorschach to reflect back our unconscious
assumptions. In our not knowing lies the novel's suspense... Hamid
literally leaves us at the end in a kind of alley, the story suddenly
suspended; it's even possible that some act of violence might occur. But
more likely, we are left holding the bag of conflicting worldviews. We're left
to ponder the symbolism of Changez having been caught up in the game of
symbolism—a game we ourselves have been known to play.”

In an interview in May 2007, Hamid said of the brevity of The Reluctant Fundamentalist:
"I'd rather have people read my book twice than only half-way through.”

His third novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, was released in March 2013
by Riverhead Books. As with his previous books, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising
Asia bends conventions of both genre and form. Narrated in the second person, it tells
the story of the protagonist's ("your") journey from a poor rural boy to tycoon in an
unnamed contemporary city in "rising Asia," and of his pursuit of the nameless "pretty
girl" whose path continually crosses but never quite converges with his. Stealing its
shape from the self-help books read by ambitious youths all over "rising Asia," the novel
is playful but also quite profound in its portrayal of the thirst for ambition and love in a
time of shattering economic and social upheaval.
Hamid's most recent novel, Exit West, published in 2017, is about a young couple,
Nadia and Saeed, and their relationship in a time where the world is taken by storm by
migrants. It was shortlisted for the 2017 Booker prize.

Slide4:
Mohsin as a diasporic writers deals with alomost similar issues which are touched upon
other diasporic writers. He shows similar concerns about dilemma related with
hyphenated identity, cultural shocks and many other related issues. For example we
have some important such features common among the diasporic writers on this slide.
We discussed these issues in the two lectures on the British Pakistani poet Moniza Alvi.
Let me read from the slide…

Slide5:
Mohsin Hamid as a Novelist (A Critical Perspective):
Let me read the points from the slide which provide a brief look at Mohsin Hamid as a novelist
While South Asian fiction in English has been in vogue for over two decades now, and India

has been placed firmly (even centrally) on the map of world literatures. However, Pakistan,

has remained largely off limits.

The work of Mohsin Hamid represents a refreshing departure from this (admittedly recent)

tradition. Mohsin Hamid, in his novels, abandons an elaborate and highly embellished style

full of extensive details in favour of minimalist brevity. His interview where he said that “he

would rather like people read his book twice than only half-way through” has already been

referred to. More than this though, his self-consciously ‘modern’ writing style offers a

vision of Pakistani modernity which breaks with the stereotype (that has prevailed since

9/11) of the region as fundamentally traditional, backward looking, essentially anti-

modern.
His first novel, Moth Smoke (2000), takes place in Lahore during the summer of 1998 as

tensions between India and Pakistan spiral. However, this novel of his differs in technique

from the second novel. With its numerous narrators, each of which signal the limits and

provisional status of the others, Moth Smoke appears very differently to the monologic

discourse of Hamid’s second novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007). However, the

effect is ultimately the same: the very constriction of perspective and point of view in The

Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) invites us to question the narrative voice we are offered.

The carefully contained plot of The Reluctant Fundamentalist unfolds over the space of just

a few hours following a chance encounter in Lahore between returned Pakistani migrant,

Changez, and an unnamed American visitor. The two men take tea together in the market

place of Old Anarkali, then share a meal, before walking back through the darkness to the

American’s hotel. Hamid fastidiously withholds information from his readers and we are

left wondering about the superficially innocent relationship between these new

acquaintances. We are faced with the questions such as; “Is Changez seeking to entrap the

American? Or is the American seeking to entrap Changez? Or are these two possibilities

merely fantasies/fears within the mind of a delusional Changez?

We have no way of knowing because the novel ends as abruptly and inexplicably as it

begins.  Moreover, the potentially dialogic encounter between these two men is rendered

as a dramatic monologue. It’s not just that the unnamed American is a quiet American, but

that Changez speaks for him so he can only be heard in the responses of Changez: 'How

did I know you were American?', 'What did I think of Princeton?'. If this narrative device

feels slightly contrived it also serves to defamiliarise, or render strange and suspect their

exchange. It also heightens the reader’s sense of uncertainty about the power relations

between the two men. Changez, like Conrad’s Marlow, the ancient mariner’s mesmerising

power over the American who is twitchy and helpless in Changez’ presence. At the same

time there is the nagging feeling that the American’s silence is the trick of a CIA agent
biding his time as the innocent and expansive Changez discloses the intimate details of his

past. As Hamid has said of the form of the novel: 'the narrator and his audience both acting

as characters allowed me to mirror the mutual suspicion with which America and Pakistan

(or the Muslim world) look at one another.'

Slide6:

This slide provides a glimpse into the novel as an introduction to it

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a "metafictional"[1] novel by Pakistani author Mohsin

Hamid, published in 2007. The novel uses the technique of a frame story, which takes
place during the course of a single evening in an outdoor Lahore cafe, where a bearded
Pakistani man called Changez tells a nervous American stranger about his love affair
with an American woman, and his eventual abandonment of America. A short story
adapted from the novel, called "Focus on the Fundamentals," appeared in the fall 2006
issue of The Paris Review. A film adaptation of the novel by director Mira
Nair premiered at the 2012 Venice Film Festival.[2]

So far as the stylistic features of the novel are concerned, it is an example of a dramatic
monologue; and autodiegetic narration. A critic argues that the novel reflects on its own
footprints from production all the way to publication. According to the critic, Hamid does
this through the character of Erica, a novelist, who stands for Hamid's "Eureka"
moments (this is the moment when Hamid as an author was inspired), taking the debate
away from Erica as America.

Slide7:
Historical Context 

We now come to the background of the novel which possibly served as the driving force
behind production or writing of this novel
The Reluctant Fundamentalist explores the world, particularly the United States and Pakistan,
during the late 90s and early 2000s. The single most important historical event in the novel is
the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11. 2001: Hamid shows how the
events of this day inspired the War on Terror in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, as well as
the impact of that act on the social world of the United States. The India-Pakistan Standoff of
2001-2002, which makes Changez fear for his family’s safety, is another important event in the
novel. Finally, Hamid alludes to the early 2000s recession, which coincided with the dot-com
bubble “bursting,” and led to increased unemployment around the world."

There are some important works which inspired and influenced this novel and can be found
in intertextual relationship with this novel. For example, in his interviews, Hamid himself has
cited several important influences on The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Like Albert Camus’s
novel, The Fall, published in 1957, about a man whose fortunes rise and fall in Paris, consists of
dramatic monologues, with the protagonist recalling his life and occasionally interrogating his
audience. Tayeb Salih’s 1966 novel Season of Migration to the North  is another major
influence: it tells the story of a Middle Eastern man who travels to the West, is fetishized for his
exotic otherness, and eventually leaves his adopted home. The Reluctant Fundamentalist also
bears a noticeable resemblance to the frame narrative of The Arabian Nights, in which
Scheherazade prolongs her life by telling her executor lengthy, tangential stories.

Slide8:

Significance of the Title:

The novel’s title The Reluctant Fundamentalist is quite significant for its contradictory meaning.
It somehow stands for the radical actions carried out by the American government to maintain
national security after the 9/11 attacks. The story follows the life of Changez (a Pakistani man
living in the United States). He is the embodiment of the upper class immigrants. He studied at
Princeton and worked as an analyst for Underwood Samson & Company. The company’s motto:
“Focus on the Fundamentals”  is a kind of nostalgia that the Americans developed after the
events of 9/11. The words of this motto refer to a short story written by Mohsin Hamid as well.
Simultaneously, the title is also linked with the struggle of Changez to understand his
‘fundamental identity’.

All this American nostalgia turns into a ‘fundamentalist’ attempt or rather an obsession to
enhance their national security. This led them to commit inhumane practices such as torture in
order to extract information from presumed terrorists. These procedures have always been
controversial for its lack of principles but nearly two thirds of the US populations have, at one
point, supported the like practices if those happen to thwart a terrorist attack 3.

Changez explicitly criticises the US political interventions in the Middle East. He wants to make
Americans aware of their mistake or misunderstanding in construction of the stereotypes from
the people of Middle east, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and other muslim countries in the heat of
their reaction to the unfortunate incident of 9/11. In this regard, Changez’s concludes: “I assure
you. It seems an obvious thing to say, but you should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all
potential terrorists, just as we should not imagine that you Americans are all undercover
assassins.” (Hamid, 183).

Changez’s love life in America is one of the most meaningful aspects in the story. The element
that makes this element so significant is the figure of Erica, a young American woman who finds
it difficult to commit herself emotionally to Changez. Erica’s mental health is something
important to understand the development of the plotline. Undoubtedly, Erica is the plot’s most
complex character and represents the role of America in socio-political contexts. Actually, the
name Erica is contained within the word America. It hints there is an interconnection between
the two. Like the land of North America, where the popular American Dream emerges, Erica is
also defined as having a magnetising attraction that avoids her fearsome solitude. As Changez
says something similar thus;
“She had told me that she hated to be alone, and I came to notice that she rarely was. She
attracted people to her; she had presence, an uncommon magnetism” (Hamid, 21).

This is done on purpose; the author shows by means of this the image America attempts to
foster internationally. Yet, differently to what it actually happens both in the book and in
reality, Erica is a troubled young woman incapable to get over the death of her former
boyfriend, Chris. The latter is the reason why Erica and Changez’s relationship is doomed to fail
from the very beginning. In relation to this, such sense of loneliness is rendered in a political
context as international isolation, which is something that North America, as the great one
nation that attempts to project worldwide, fears considerably.

Chris (Erica’s old-time boyfriend) is a short name for Christian (the follower of Christ) and so,
refers to Chris as Erica’s ‘home’ hints America’s preference for its original Christian background.
This is emphasised by means of Erica's obsession with Chris, which metaphorically does not
allow Changez to accommodate completely. In other words, Changez can dwell as an American
citizen but he will never be one with the land. This presumption reinforces a symbolic allusion,
by means of the characters and their relationships, of the deteriorated relations between the
United States and the Middle East. In fact, Erica initially admires Changez’s politeness and
considers him to be different, exotic when she says: “well- liked as an exotic acquaintance”.
The saddest of it all is that Changez virtually knows this thing, but he is hopeful to win her over.
This entails Changez is just an exotic outsider determined to win Erica’s heart when he is
nothing but the shadow of Chris. This turns upside down all his attempts of winning Erica’s love
as she will never see him the way he wants her to. Subsequently, he faces the assertion that
“she was in love with someone else again and again. It did not matter that the person Erica
loved had deceased; for Erica he was alive enough, and that was the problem”. Relating to that,
America will always lay under a cloud of suspicion when it comes to foreign affairs with the
Middle East.
An example of this latter is the awkward and mostly one-sided conversation between Changez
and the American stranger at a café in Lahore, where the unnamed American shows himself
uncomfortable and uneasy, suspecting about nothing and everything at the same time.

Lastly, the attitude that Changez holds towards the American in the café and his narration
amounts to a criticism aimed at making Americans review their own policy of stereotyping
people as fundamentalists. It conveys the message that people are forced to become
“reluctantly” fundamentalists in reaction to American fundamentalist stance and attitude
towards people them. Thus the paradoxical combination of the modifier “reluctant” with the
word “fundamentalist” is technically very important in construction of the title of this novel and
sums up the central theme of the story.