The Reluctant Fundamentalist
By Mohsin Hamid
Penguin £7.99
FT bookshop price: £6.39

Recruited fresh out of Princeton, refined Lahorian Changez becomes the top-rated analyst in a prestigious financial valuation firm. His love of New York swells with the modest attentions of Erica, but their inchoate relationship gradually withers beneath her nostalgic attachment to a childhood lover who died of lung cancer. Changez’s inner turmoil is compounded by the trauma of 9/11 and the rising tide of public hostility towards Pakistanis. After Moth Smoke, his tart debut novel of Pakistan’s nervous nuclear posturing, Mohsin Hamid infuses The Reluctant Fundamentalist with subtly conflicting nuances. Decency and predation, hospitality and alienation, mingle in a yarn that holds echoes, both in form and tension, of Conrad’s Lord Jim. Hamid embroils the reader in an understanding of nationalism that, by eschewing dialogue, cuts itself off from healthy relationships. Entwining political with sexual themes, he gives an elegant potency to this playful narration.