The Reluctant Fundamentalist: a not inconsiderably vile and nasty little novel

When The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid’s novel about a successful young Pakistani working in New York who becomes disillusioned with America after 9/11, was published in 2007, the praise from all quarters was deafening. The Observer found it “gripping… taut until the final pages”.

The New Statesman called it “amazingly exciting”.Even the Daily Telegraph succumbed, deeming it “sharp, relevant, impressively intelligent”. It was short-listed for the Booker, won a slew of other prizes, and reached No. 4 on the New York Times best-seller list. The author – this was his second published novel – was everywhere.

I read The Reluctant Fundamentalist last week (I’ve just joined a book group to make me read books I normally wouldn’t) and I have to admit that, while I didn’t particularly fancy it when it first came out, I was surprised to discover that not only is it not as good as our liberal cultural elite pronounced it to be, it is, in fact, one of the most morally dishonest, intellectually tawdry and badly-written books I have ever read.

If you haven’t read it, imagine one of those calm-voiced Muslims, invariably enjoying the considerable benefits of Western democracy, who are wheeled onto the Today programme and every other UK broadcasting outlet in the wake of the latest terrorist outrage to condemn the use of violence before – inevitably – adding the rider that tells us they’re actually jolly pleased that a dozen or a hundred or several thousand entirely innocent people in a Western country have been killed or maimed by a pack of psychopathic stone-age death cultists with issues regarding masculinity and self-image. “But what the West has to understand is that it is American support for Zionist imperialism… but if America hadn’t invaded Iraq… but tens of thousands of Muslims have died… but this is what the Palestinians have to suffer every day... but these people feel they have no other means of expressing their legitimate opposition…” on and on, ad infinitum, morality through the looking-glass. 

Now imagine that one of these apologists for terrorist violence had decided to sit down and write a novel explicitly excusing terrorism and those who aid terrorists, albeit at one or more removes, and you have The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

The central character in the book, Changez (ooh! there’s subtle!) is a Lahore-born bright spark who attends Princeton before joining a successful American consultancy which advises companies on how to increase profits - i.e. destroy the lives of innocent workers around the world by sacking them. Changez (oh God, that’s annoying!) has literature’s least convincing “love” affair with literature’s most anaemic and annoying woman, some ghastly privileged fruit-loop pining for her dead sweetheart (she has a sketch of a volcano on the wall of her apartment which her deceased boyfriend executed when he was eight or nine – as if!). 

Much to our relief, Miss Vapid Droopy-Drawers eventually commits suicide. This frees our “hero”, who has begun to realise how wicked America is following the 9/11 attacks (huh?) and has started goofing off at work as a result of his awakening political conscience (i.e. he has discovered the joy of feeling aggrieved for no good reason), to forsake the horrors of American capitalism and democracy and return to the cuddly, gentler delights of ciivilised Lahore to become a radical college lecturer, essentially encouraging young Muslim hotheads to kill anyone who doesn’t agree with them. He’s against violence, of course – unless (and here’s that oh-so-familiar rider) it’s committed in the name of self-defence. And while America hasn’t invaded Pakistan, it’s suspected of (for some odd reason) backing democratic, capitalist, West-friendly India, which is threatening to invade poor little innocent Pakistan. So killing Americans is, you see, self-defence: even if they’re not actually attacking you, they might be thinking of doing so, or of helping someone else who is thinking of doing so. And all you’ve got to defend yourself with are nuclear weapons! How can that be fair?

The book (which is mercifully short) consists of a one-sided conversation between the newly enlightened terror-supporting Princeton graduate and an American stranger who never gets to speak, but who we know – because the narrator tells us - is a silly, cultureless oaf of an infidel foreigner who can’t appreciate the subtleties of Lahori food or its colours or the scent of its jasmine flowers or the exquisite manners of its gentle, peace-loving, charity-giving, poetry-spouting inhabitants or even our hero’s justification of his own morally insane take on recent history.  (The only vaguely sympathetic American characters in the book are a homosexual - who would obviously flourish in a Muslim society, and a mentally ill woman. All the non-Americans are simply darling!)

Philip Pullman called it “more exciting than any thriller I’ve read for a long time”. I can only suggest that Phil reads more thrillers – well, any other thriller, in fact. The only source of tension provided by the plot is whether the American stranger is planning to kill the narrator, or vice-versa. I’d figured out the answer by page 30, and spent the next 180 pages wishing the narrator’s dinner companion would produce his automatic weapon and blow the annoying sonofabitch’s head off.  

The book’s essential dishonesty is exemplified by numerous instances of truly atrocious, inauthentic writing. For instance, it may be that all Princeton graduates who originally hail from Pakistan sound speak like Hurree Singh of Billy Bunter fame, and all double-negative away like John Major, but I somehow doubt it:  “not altogether infrequent”, “a man physically not unlike yourself”, “a not insubstantial component”.  There are dozens of these idiotic circumlocutions peppered throughout the book.

And how would you relate to a fictional character who spoke like this about an old flame?: “Suffice it to say that in relationship to the contemporary female icons of your country, she belonged more to the camp of Paltrow than to that of Spears”. Or to a fictional female character who talks like this to her boyfriend: “I love it when you talk about where you come from… you become so alive.” (I can’t remember ever being told this by an appreciative girlfriend when banging on about the glories of Oslo – but, then, I evidently do not possess the not insubstantial powers of self-expression of this novel’s not inconsiderably annoying narrator.)

Ultimately, it’s Changez’s relentless hatred of America and its people which is so depressing, demonstrated by this culturally snobbish dismissal of a friendly work colleague: “He had a penchant for quoting lines from popular cinema, much as my mother quoted the poems of Faiz and Ghalib”. (Yes, but at least Americans don’t tend to throw acid into the faces of teenage girls who want to be educated.)

But of course, its America’s exercise of power that’s so galling: “Yes, my musings were bleak indeed. I reflected that I had always resented the manner in which America conducted itself in the world: your country’s constant interference in the affairs of others was insufferable… It was right for me to refuse to participate any longer in this project of domination…”

Yes, indeed, how horrible of America to play a key role in defeating Nazi Germany, the peace-loving Japanese, and the Soviet Union: how much better off we’d all be if they’d just kept their damned noses out of the rest of the world’s affairs!  

Anyway, enough of this poxy, smelly, dishonest little book. 

According to the cover blurb, the author lives in London. And is, no doubt, not immoderately grateful to be allowed to do so.