Indian Writing

I agree with some of Eunice de Souza’s reservations about the book when she writes:

I wish I could be as enthusiastic about the book as many reviewers seem to be. Given the subject, the book seems glib, too polemical to offer new insights. For instance, in a passage likely to be quoted frequently, Changez tells us that he was “pleased at the slaughter of thousands of innocents” when he happened to catch on television the Twin Towers being destroyed. He is “caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought someone to her knees.” In case the hearer is disgusted, he reminds him of the “joy” Americans feel at “American munitions laying waste the structures of your enemies”.

To reduce the savagery of human history to scoring debating points is to seriously undermine the narrative. Changez claims he is not a “sociopath” and can feel for others. But what sort of person of any nation or faith can feel pleasure at such destruction? Can one really watch a desperate woman trying to leap from one of the top floors of the burning Tower and think “symbolically”?

…. America too, we are told, is retreating into “nostalgia” after 9/11. It doesn’t help that when the speaker hears she committed suicide, he goes to see the actual spot and thinks, “It was a beautiful spot to commit suicide.”

By and large, Changez’s voice is mock-courtly rather than “courtly”, and this gives the rather thin narrative a sense of menace. But the choice of monologue as a form limits the book to obvious jibes. America is too easy a target, and Mohsin Hamid lets himself off too lightly.