The Reluctant Fundamentalist

In honor of the first meeting this semester of Multicultural Literature Book Club sponsored by the Intercultural Center (and since prior commitments will keep me from our discussion tomorrow, 9-16-8, in the ICC at noon) this post is a book review.

Special thanks to Barb Stransky for tracking down an audio version of the book for me. I audio-read/ listened to the text. The best discussion I’ve found might be found at shortlist for the Booker Prize site, an online debate over the merits of the short list for the 2007 Booker Prize.

At first I found the first person thing annoying. 1^st person narrators are notoriously unreliable, ambiguous and subjective, and he refers to that when he says his “history” is at least true in its essence. That said, this makes it unconventional and artistic. The choice provokes discussion and avoids trite resolution.

The novella is overtly symbolic, in the nature of a Hawthorne novel, and is best understood in terms of an allegory. Wikipedia notes that his name, Changez, is Urdu for Genghis. The Chilean bookseller’s reference to young men captured and trained to kill for their adopted groups is Christian, right? But Genghis Khan’s tribe exchanged princes with the Romans in the same way. Maybe even Genghis himself, (if I remember my history channel).

Erica symbolizes the American dream, much like the Statue of Liberty or any other physical monument. Like Gatsby, Changez reinvents himself for the object of his desire, this Erica/ AmErica.

The crux is the Ghost seduction scene – where, after a failed attempt at “possession” – to “have her” - he tells (Am)Erica, “Imagine I’m Chris.” Changez hijacks the ghost of Chris and uses it to ram the twin pillars of Erica’s long guarded treasure. This results in, as the French would say, “La petit mort” her first with another man (she’d only reached climax one other time since Chris’ death, where she pulled her own trigger while imagining Chris.) Like the towers on 9/11, her shudders signal collapse and impeding devastation.

Or does Changez offer himself up as a vehicle for the ghost – himself a spiritual victim of a long lost idea? We can’t trust his rationalizations. Was Changez the plane or the hijacker? Meat puppet or metaphysical date-rapist? I see him as the incubus who destroys his lover and loses his soul. His rationalizations for co opting the dead Chris smacks of the rationalizations of date rapists on a recent episode of “The Closer.”

The allegory isn't pure or consistent. Working for Underwood Sampson, he’s been blind and weak, but he regains his strength after his hair grows out.Christianity is a clear source of the allegory, but Changez shifting identifications with disparate images shows his actions are rationalizations for baser motives rather than the altruistic goals put forth in a monologue meant, after all, to detain and expose an enemy combatant, so anything said is unreliable. Does he blame some Delilah for cutting his hair? Would he say anything's fair in love or war? Could the pillars be also a Philistine prison?

And what about Chris – and obvious Christ figure who died for the sins of others (remember he died of lung cancer though he’d never smoked until he learned his death was inevitable and immediate)?