The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The Book

This is a short 200 page novel written in the first person, with the narrator talking to an American stranger he happens to meet in Lahore. He proceeds to tell him his life story - how he was educated in Princetown via a grant, graduated with honours and went to work for a high profile US company. Combined with this is the love story between the narrator and Elisa, a girl who cannot move on from the love of her life who died of leukaemia.
I found the narrator method quite clunky when his is the only voice you get to hear - the stranger does not get to speak at all and the book becomes a one-sided conversation. Perhaps this is allegorical linked to Eastern and Western cultures. It has been said that the narrator's love for Elisa and then her gradual decline and madness are symbolic to that of his love for America. You gradually get to learn how he becomes disenchanted with the US and its political and economical approaches to the Middle East following 9/11.

 I was expecting more than a dissenting voice based on the title of the book, but this is misleading as the company he works for in the USA deals in fundamentals (rationalising businesses and making them more profitable).




The ending does not come as much of a surprise as it is what the novel has been inevitably leading up to, but again the single voice narration causes a lack of drama at the situation.






The Film

The film adaptation takes the idea of the novel, but builds on this and works so much better, in my view, in showing the mistrust and paranoia that has beset the United States since 9/11 and how potentially dangerous it can be in alienating others.
We get the scenario of the narrator explaining his back story to an American, but things are already established, or so you are led to believe, beforehand.. Changez is already under suspicion of preaching anti-US sentiment and a suspect in the kidnapping of a US citizen, when Liev Schreiber's Bobby interviews him under the watchful cameras and recording devices of a security unit.
It would be so logical for Changez to resent the constant interrogations and humiliation he receives at the hands of police and airport security in his back story; to turn to radical extremism after the betrayal of even his girlfriend, when she uses the Muslim faith and 9/11 as a tacky art installation; but this would be what Western eyes would assume.
In a tense build up between the intrusive Pakistani police force and students from Lahore University, we are never sure of Changez' true colours until the end reveals that we can still have misconceptions and that even after a shooting that could so easily have become a call to arms, Changez preaches for turning the other cheek.

Great acting all round and a brilliant soundtrack