MOHSIN HAMID (b.1971)
The Reluctant Fundamentalist. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2007.
‘We made this novel, not I’: first edition of Hamid’s compelling second novel, signed on the title and annotated by the author with 549 words on 37 pages. A dramatic monologue set at a café table in Lahore, The Reluctant Fundamentalist tells the tale of a Pakistani professor whose life as an immigrant in the USA is dramatically altered by the events of 9/11. The author’s frequent annotations bring to light the underlying structure of the novel, which Hamid describes in mathematical and architectural terms, and for which he also provides diagrammatic evidence. Some annotations offer snippets of autobiography, particularly around his residence in Lahore and the changes the city has undergone over the years, while others refer to literary influences and allusions in the text. The final note, on the very last page of the novel, implicates the reader in what they have read: ‘And at the end, the mirror. The reader left with what they have imagined, what it means to have imagined this, what they are, as much as who Changez is, or who I am. We made this novel, not I.’

Octavo. Original black cloth, gilt lettering to spine, pictorial dust jacket (puncture and tear with tape repair to front pastedown).

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