Booker Prize Foundation interview with Mohsin Hamid on tapping into the reader’s imagination (September 2007)
Q: Congratulations on making the Man Booker shortlist. Where were you when you heard The Reluctant Fundamentalist had made the shortlist – and were you surprised?
A: I was in a radio studio, doing a programme with Simon Mayo on Radio 5 live, when he suddenly announced that he had just received the Man Booker shortlist and would be reading it out. He read my name last. I assumed he wouldn’t be cruel enough to put me through that if I wasn’t on the list, but yes, my heart sped up a bit.
Q: The Reluctant Fundamentalist cleverly taps into the reader’s own prejudices about the word ‘fundamentalist’. Were you trying to demonstrate how engrained these prejudices are today?
A: The novel is just a conversation between two men, one of whom we never hear, and yet many people have said it feels like a thriller. The reason for that is we are already afraid. We have been led to believe that we live in a world where terrorism is as likely to kill us as cancer or cholesterol, where the ability to engage in dispassionate, impersonal, politically-motivated homicide is not an aberration but rather natural. We have been encouraged to lose a sense of perspective. And so the fear provoked by the novel is within us. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a dramatic monologue, in other words a half-conversation, a half-story. The reader is asked to provide the other half of the novel’s meaning. And in so doing, by co-creating the novel, readers have an experience of themselves. Or at least that is my hope, to contain within the fascination and seduction of a fast-paced and emotionally powerful story the fascination and seduction of a strange-shaped and oddly reflective mirror.
Q: There has been speculation about the meaning behind the name of your protagonist ‘Changez’. Can you clarify any meaning behind his name?
A: Changez is the Urdu name for Genghis, as in Genghis Khan. It is the name of a warrior, and the novel plays with the notion of a parallel between war and international finance, which is Changez’s occupation. But at the same time, the name cautions against a particular reading of the novel. Genghis attacked the Arab Muslim civilization of his time, so Changez would be an odd choice of name for a Muslim fundamentalist. In fact, Changez is something of a secular nationalist, and not particularly religious.
Q: What was it like being in New York following 9/11 as a young Pakistani male?
A: I moved to London a month before the attacks, although I have continued to visit New York regularly since. In the immediate paranoia that followed 9/11, I had friends there who weren’t allowed to board planes, whose houses were searched, who were picked up by the FBI at work. But it is dangerous to generalize about these things. I know many young Pakistani males who live in New York today and who would never dream of living anywhere else, London included. When I go to New York I still feel a powerful bond with the city. I suspect I will live there again one day, at least for a while.
Q: You studied at Princeton and worked in New York. How was The Reluctant Fundamentalist received there?
A: Surprisingly well. I say surprisingly because I had been bracing myself for a more negative reaction in America. Instead the novel made it onto the bestseller lists and received sympathetic reviews. My intention had been to write a novel that said some difficult things, offered one character’s rather forceful critique of America, but that did so from a standpoint of enormous affection. Changez is in love with America, and with an American woman, after all. Critique that mocks or offends is easily rejected, but critique that comes from a position of shared desire has the potential to start a conversation.
Q: Have film rights gone for The Reluctant Fundamentalist?
A: Mira Nair optioned the film a few months ago. She came to London for the premiere of The Namesake, took my wife and me out for lunch, and completely won us over. I loved Monsoon Wedding, and while I think The Reluctant Fundamentalist is quite different from her previous films, I am impressed by her passion for the project and her insight into the novel. She is also an absolute pleasure to be around.
Q: What is next for you? Are you working on a new novel?
A: I am working on a new novel, but not in the sense that I am actually writing one. Each of my first two novels has taken me seven years to write, and they are both short novels. They have taken a long time because I have written and re-written them over and over again, trying different voices, different formal structures. I keep tinkering and changing, often not looking at a previous draft when I write the next one, until something clicks and I know I have reached my final version. And for me the process begins by letting an idea settle. So I currently have a notebook, and I jot down ideas, characters, elements of plot. I dream while I walk. Hopefully in a few months I will be hungry enough, and know enough, to begin the writing itself.
Q: What would be your Booker of Bookers?
A: Picking one would be impossible. I have great respect for many Booker winning novels. But if I had to select a few that gave me particular pleasure at the time that I read them, then The Remains of the Day and The English Patient would certainly be on my shortlist.
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