"Do not be frightened by my beard. I am a lover of America."

Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist was a great companion novel to Amy Waldman's The Submission.  In The Submission, the architect Mohammed Khan starts the story American and proud, but increasingly begins to feel like America does not want him, and becomes alienated in his own country.  The narrator of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Changez, grows up in Pakistan and then works to make himself as American as possible, getting a highly sought-after position at a financial firm, chasing after a blue-blood, beautiful woman named Erika, and generally living the good life.  Then 9/11 happens, and he begins to think that maybe America isn't all that great.

This short novel is narrated through Changez's monologue.  He spends the whole book chatting with an American - we can't be sure, but the American seems to be someone operating undercover from a few hints.  Changez tells the American his life story as they sit and enjoy tea, a meal, and then a walk back to the American's hotel.

There was a lot of heavy symbolism in this book.  Changez = Change, Erika = America, Fundamentalism = America's self-absorption, and many more that I'm sure I missed.  I think the symbolism was a bit too heavy-handed for my liking, though clearly Hamid wanted to make a point and to hit readers over the head with it.

What I appreciated about this book was the way it turned fundamentalism on its head and showed people just how differently America can be viewed by people who have a different perspective.  Much like Mohammed Khan in The Submission, Changez wanted to be American, but Americans did not want to see him as American.  When Changez goes back to Pakistan, he becomes an anti-American activist, speaking out against American policies.  Does this make him a terrorist?  Would we assume that Europeans who speak out against American policies are terrorists and enemies of the state?

In many ways, The Reluctant Fundamentalist felt like a rehash of the racial and political debate that many Middle Easterners and South Asians already feel very close to.  In that way, it didn't break a ton of new ground for me, but I am aware that my experience can be quite different than other people's, and I'm glad that there are more and more books being published now that attempt to shed life on other perspectives.  Whether Changez is ultimately a terrorist or not is a question readers are left wondering at the end of the book, but the power of the story is that we could understand Changez going either way.

This is a short novel that packs a lot of debate and points to ponder in its few pages.  I listened to it on audiobook and enjoyed the narration.  Definitely recommend this novel if you want to see a different perspective on the after-effects of 9/11 and how other people might view America.