From: The Daily Mail (March 23, 2007)
New Fiction
By EITHNE FARRY
This elegant, provocative novel opens at a cafe table in the Old Anarkali district of Lahore, where a bearded man is in earnest conversation with an uneasy American visitor. In beautifully measured prose the narrator, Changez, explains that he was born in Pakistan, schooled in Princeton, and employed by a prestigious New York firm who specialised in harsh appraisals of faltering companies. He describes, in quietly poetic sentences, his admiration for America, his infatuation with New York and his love for a troubled Manhattan princess, whose friendship promised entree into the city’s elite, bohemian, moneyed society.
And then, with an intelligent matter of factness, he reveals how dismayed he was to discover that he was “remarkably pleased” by the fact “that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees” when the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred. It forced Changez to re-evaluate everything he once believed in - America, his culture, his identity, his faith, the very “fundamentals” of his life.
Author Mohsin Hamid offers a delicate meditation on the nature of perception and prejudice, perhaps best summed up by Changez’s remark to the unidentified American: “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.” |