The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid

I had high expectations of the book before reading it, since I had enjoyed reading Hamid's earlier book, Moth Smoke. This 200 page book was a quick, but disapointing read. The language with it's Sir this and Sir that, got irritating, and the story did not get anywhere. His attempt at love with Erica was bizzare, and the connections between his two worlds that he was trying to reconcile were not clear. At times I felt he was describing his life to Daniel Pearl before murdering him.

Sin has an interesting take on the Reluctant Fundamentalist. Sin also describes the insane violence in Karachi, with graphic images.
Salil Tripathi reviews it here, and Amitava
Kumar reviews it here.

Changez is from a family with feudal trappings but no real wealth other than an appreciation of etiquette. His place in Princeton and later in corporate America is marked by self-doubt. A woman that he falls in love with, Erica, is from a wealthy family. Erica, like the America of which she is quite literally a part, represents the allure of a more desirable future that is always threatened by loss.

This anxiety breeds resentment and confusion. Describing why he smiled when the towers fell, Changez says, "When I am approached for a donation to charity, I tend to be forthcoming, at least insofar as my modest means will permit. So when I tell you I was pleased at the slaughter of thousands of innocents, I do so with a profound sense of perplexity."

The triangulation of desire and resentment holds better in the realm of love, however, than in geopolitics—or at least it is more readily intelligible as such in the novel, and that makes the first half of the new novel more absorbing than the preachier latter half.