Mohsin Hamid Engages the World in The Reluctant Fundamentalist: “An Island on an Island,” Worlds in Miniature and “Fiction” in the Making

Abstract

The Reluctant Fundamentalist proves vitally engaged in the concerns of the mind and its passages reveal a struggle with difficulties of a sort that make anxiety seem an innocuous euphemism or outdated scholarly endeavor, which inevitably veers the reader's attention away from their importance in understanding the text and its world. This essay is concerned with the psychological, artistic, historical and geographical contingencies Mohsin Hamid faces in putting together his novel/la1 through the travail of production and publication. The Reluctant Fundamentalist has cemented Hamid's reputation and taken on the guise of a relatively autonomous sphere in its own fashion. Hamid resorts to powerful actions of a “begetting” kind, and specifying points of departure for his novel/la grows increasingly problematic. The novel/la is in fact intricate, and its resemblance with many productions is striking nevertheless. Going against the grain of fundamental and dominant traditions through a reluctant ethos, Hamid engages in beginnings and beginnings again to find alternatives, a Saidian reasoning read in The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Taking its cue from Hamid's reflection on the manufacturing of his own “fiction” and Said's Beginnings, this essay examines how Hamid builds on Albert Camus's La chute as a point of reference to inaugurate The Reluctant Fundamentalist which owes its genesis to miscellaneous acts of beginning based, among many others, on McEwan's Atonement and Ali's Brick Lane. Hamid also engages world events such as America's beginning as a nation and 9/11, which both have inspired the novel/la's impulse to begin and begin again in the process of production. These influences with the alternatives given make up the texture of his novel/la, which is not only creative in nature, but also theoretical and philosophical in trajectories.

The Artist’s Way: Mohsin Hamid Confesses an Artistic Trauma in his Non-Fiction

“…However, non-fiction remains more straightforward and clearer in terms of personal truths and, therefore, can help confirm the claim that Hamid is preoccupied with his artistic experiences. Hamid's non-fiction, because it is more personal, can establish my claim that his fiction, apart from having a metafictional potential (as already discussed in Madiou, 2019) can be considered autobiographical. By autobiography, I do not mean that Hamid's fiction is autobiographical in the conventional sense of the term, which is defined by the COD as "a personal account of one's own life" (89), but autobiographical on another plane, meaning Hamid's fiction gives us, through symbols, snippets and moments of his own experiences.…”