Their brief encounter turns into hours, and at the end of the day we don't know much more about the mysterious American, but we have heard the entire life history of thirty-year-old Changez.Īnd his story reads like a classic tale of alienation: a young Pakistani who has become alienated from the promise of the West through a confrontation with that which has made him into an enemy: his Muslim identity.Ĭhangez lived the American dream for four and a half years. The Western visitor eyes his bearded opponent with suspicion, well aware that America is at war with Islamic forces across the world (the novel is set in the present). Now the author has turned his sharp eye on America – by way of looking once again at Pakistan, or, more precisely, the hectic, dusty terrain of the Anarkali bazaar in the heart of old Lahore.Īn unnamed American and a talkative Pakistani meet up at the bazaar. He demonstrated this already in his first novel Moth Smoke (2000), which took a critical insider's look at the vicissitudes of Pakistani society. But Hamid, born in Lahore in 1971 and located in London since finishing his studies at Princeton, has too much experience wandering between different worlds to fall into a simple pattern of describing a "clash of civilizations." Mohsin Hamid's tale fits right in with current debates about the radicalization of young Muslims. Born and bred in Lahore, educated at Harvard and Princeton, now based in London, England - Mohsin Hamid
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