The novel is just a conversation between two men, one of whom we never hear, and yet many people have said it feels like a thriller. The reason for that is we are already afraid. We have been led to believe that we live in a world where terrorism is as likely to kill us as cancer or cholesterol, where the ability to engage in dispassionate, impersonal, politically-motivated homicide is not an aberration but rather natural. We have been encouraged to lose a sense of perspective. And so the fear provoked by the novel is within us. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a dramatic monolgue, in other words a half-conversation, a half-story. The reader is asked to provide the other half of the novel’s meaning. And in so doing, by co-creating the novel, readers have an experience of themselves. Or at least that is my hope, to contain within the fascination and seduction of a fast-paced and emotionally powerful story the fascination and seduction of a strange-shaped and oddly reflective mirror.

Mohsin Hamid, the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, reads tomorrow at Vassar College, Sanders, 5.30 PM. The above is from an interview after the announcement of the short-list for the Man Booker Prize. For those who aren’t close by and can’t make it, you can hear Mohsin read here.

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