The Reluctant Fundamentalist - A Review / Rahul

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - A review

That day, feeling slightly high on a rationed quantity of Old Monk and carbonated fizz, I walked in home to find my brother and my dad talking about a plane crashing into the WTC and even as I was trying to register surprise...I heard that another plane had crashed into its twin tower and suddenly there was this enormous possibility of it being deliberate. I remember feeling sad about the people trapped in the twin towers...but somewhere deep inside me, I was smiling at seeing the confusion within the American Intelligentsia. To use a cliché, 'in one swell swoop', the US of A was exposed to war in their own land.
(continue reading)

Hi Rahul
Your review provokes interest in the book, which I was unsure about reading before. I was waiting to hear some of the book's conclusions about why people like Changez reject America (but you didn't give them away :-)) - and where the root of that phenomenon lies. It cannot be explained broadly as cultural clash, as there are plenty of Muslims who still live in America, integrated or not. Is it a personal orientation, or the play of individual circumstances, or a tide of the times? Is it more about where a person is in his own life, the search for meaning in one's own life seeking larger voices to identify with.

From your description, it appears the book prefers to examine closely the experiences of one individual, hoping to find a clear thread of cause and effect. But perhaps this is a more complex issue, with multiple causations, and the author presents one aspect, without attempting to compile all causes, or an analysis of how they affect individuals.

I'll have to read this book, to find out.
Thanks for the review.

Aparna