Changez, a young Pakistani man, strikes up a conversation with a nameless American at a café on the streets of Lahore and, as night falls, he recounts his past life in America. Educated at Princeton, he falls in love with a beautiful American girl and, flying high, starts working at a prestigious financial firm. Watching the 9/11 attacks on TV, however, Changez feels, in some way, glad that America has been attacked and begins to question the ethics of his adopted country. Increasingly disgusted at the brand of capitalism that he purveys (it is the motto of his asset-stripping firm – ‘Focus on the fundamentals’ – that the book’s title refers to) he grows a beard, quits his job and moves home.
Narrated entirely in a monologue masquerading as a dialogue (with ‘you’, the shadowy American whose position the reader uneasily inhabits), Changez’s voice is elegantly rendered, conveying the political awakening and increasing anger of someone who is inside but will never be ‘of’ the system. His tale is part-elegiac, part-accusatory, as if he both idolises and blames America for his own fall from grace, but although the tone is spot-on, the characterisation is slim and the novel feels at times like an extended allegory with little meat on its bones. Only towards the ambiguous present-day ending does it transcend its schematic structure and become queasily disturbing.
‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ is an unashamed homage to Albert Camus’s ‘The Fall’, seasoned with F Scott Fitzgerald’s disillusionment at the wasteful and ultimately uncaring American dream. And if, unsurprisingly, it doesn’t measure up to these antecedents, it’s still a thoughtful and sophisticated novel that has the courage to wear its political conviction on its sleeve.
