Book reviews

The Reluctant Fundamentalist
by Mohsin Hamid
Hamish Hamilton paperback, £10.99

This writer is, so to speak, at your elbow. ‘Let me show you this.’ The Reluctant Fundamentalist makes it impossible for any reader to jump to slick assumptions about terrorists – or, indeed about anyone. You have no idea who the man is who sits beside you on a bus or shares a table in a crowded cafe. You do not know what logic pervades his thoughts or what he intends to do.

Hamid is urbane, laid-back and, when your blood is not running cold, very funny. His style is conversational, taking place in a Lahore cafe where almost everyone except the odd American is eating with their hands. It is the odd American, however, who is the subject of Hamid’s monologue, and by the end, you are wondering if he will get out alive. No, I’m not going to tell you.

The writing takes the form of an ongoing monologue by a well-educated, world-travelled businessman who happens to be in Lahore. He shares a table with an Indian diner who is a good talker – laid-back and amusing, courteous, generous, the kind that makes a Westerner feel in safe hands. What those hands might do is something else. By the end of the narrative, the good-natured American is shifting uneasily in his seat, and so are we. What’s more, we may have developed a rather different view of American world intervention. By the end of this book, if your palms are not sweating, you won’t ever have been quite human.

Alison Prince