The reluctant fundamentalist - a book of thinking

 The reluctant fundamentalist is a “bildungsroman” novel written by Mohsin Hamid.  Moshin’s book is a novel of formation, education and coming – of- age, thus I would say that the book is written in a “bildungsroman” genre and the reason to why I would say that is because the book focuses on the psychological and moral growth of Changez. We get to see how he went from being in a secretly poor family in Pakistan to a highly educated Pakistani who worked as a financial analyst for a prestigious firm in New York, and how all these changes affected him and his life in America.
 

Changez, as I said, is a boy from Pakistan who lives in America and attends Princeton University on a financial aid, whiles working at Samson Underwood.  After a trip to Greece Changez finds himself in a disastrous relationship with a woman.  Along with the failing affair, the attack of 9/11 starts to impact Changez life in America. With his life in America slowly falling apart, Changez decided to return to Pakistan.

 “Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance” is the first sentence you will read when you open the book.  This sentence is the start of a long monologue between Changez and an American, whom Changez had met in Lahore, and had invited for tea.  Changez starts to tell the American about the story of his life in the months just before and after the attacks. 

At first I was not interested in reading this book, however, when I started reading I came to notice that I was really enjoying this book. I was not sure if it was the weird one-way monologue Mohsin used, or the fact that he brought up very relevant themes not unlike from what we may see in the real world, but there was something about this book that made me continue reading it.   Some of the things could recognize can be things such as the grief of the loss of a dear one, and the strong hate for a certain group of people after a terrible action afflicted them, after my comprehension I would say that the book actual want’s to point that out – how people always want to have a certain something to blame after something terrible happens.  

The book made me happy at first, but as I got more into the book and read about how Changez was treated by the Country whom he loved so dearly, I got mad and upset, because as I said, this is something that is happening in real life. The only thing I didn’t like about this book was the ending, however, I could´ve expected it since Mohsin has a writing of his own.  He decided to leave this book with an open ending, and that made me angry at first. I´m not a very big lover of the open ending concept, I like to know what happens so that I can sleep at night without thinking about what migh´ve happened and so on.

 

This book is suitable for everyone who loves to read a good thriller. This book takes us on a long rollercoaster of thinking and feeling.  I could probably recommend people from the age 16 and over to read the book because it can be difficult to understand at times, or not difficult to understand, but the writing method makes this book a little hard to understand at first.