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The Truth Will Out: Mohsin Hamid Speaks His Name in The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Abstract
The debate on Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist has, over the years, built what Stanley Fish calls an “interpretive community” which dictates how a work should be read and discussed. The quite tedious yet all-pervading claim that Hamid, in his novels, concerns himself with globalization, economy, neoliberalism, politics, multiculturalism, identity, and whatnot is today so fashionably common among Hamid critics that it feels like this is all what Hamid's literature has to offer. This article engages in a critical discussion with Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist and its critics and suggests a new alternative to reading the novel and, by implication, Hamid's other novels. It argues that a significant aspect of The Reluctant Fundamentalist has been left undiscussed: art. Hamid's text, I submit, not only reflects on its own footprints, which makes it metafictional, but also revolves around Hamid's own artistic pursuits, experiences, and intimacies which, I suggest, are represented through Erica, herself a novelist in the story, whom Hamid artistically uses to speak his name.
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References
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