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Today the Lexington schools were closed as the poorly paid teachers travelled to Frankfurt to protest the state’s questionably legal reduction of their pensions. So… on short notice I grabbed this book from a bookshelf at Alana’s to spend 4.5 hours on grandfather duty at Lexington’s Urban Ninja Project gymnasium while she went to work and the twins burned off an incredible amount of energy-just enough time to imbibe this peculiar little gem of a novel.
A bearded young Pakistani in Lahore notices an uncomfortable American businessman in a public square and tries to reassure him and guide him around while pouring out his life story of being raised in Pakistan, educated at Princeton, and working for a New York City based international valuation company around the globe. The story is narrated entirely in the first person singular-all of the American’s responses and actions are inferred from the narrator’s discussion. As his life history unfolds, the appropriately named Changez reveals that he has become disillusioned by the world of finance, and with America generally after 9/11, and has had a tragic romantic relationship with a fellow Princeton grad who is obsessed with the death of her earlier boyfriend. She probably has committed suicide, although that is never certain. At the end, on being accompanied back to his luxury hotel, the enigmatic American still seems uneasy in the Pakistani’s company but the final action is left to the reader’s imagination. Was there a murder?
The title is a bit misleading as there is almost no discussion of religion. If there is any fundamentalism involved at all, it is the fundamentalism of extreme patriotism. And I am not sure how much of this story is autobiography- the author grew up in Lahore and graduated from Princeton, but now lives in London, not back in Lahore.
A six page “Questions for Discussion” at the end is a guide for a school literature class or an adult book cub discussion. My favourite quote in relation to the ‘war on terror’ – “ A common thread appeared to unite these conflicts, and that was a small coterie’s concept of American interests, which was defined only to refer only to the organized and politically motivated killing of civilians by killers not wearing the uniforms of soldiers.”
The Passionate Reader 