“The rules of the game have changed”: Mohsin Hamid’s<i>The Reluctant Fundamentalist</i>and post‐9/11 fiction

Morey, Peter

doi:10.1080/17449855.2011.557184

Cited by 84 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…However, viewed another way and remembering the shifty nature of our focaliserit can be read as consistent with the novel's constant attention to fiction-making: what Changez describes as 'the confession that implicates its audience'. 30 Read allegorically, as Morey suggests here, Changez' penetration of Erica seems to complicate, rather than clarify our understanding of his relationship to the US. As the narrative proceeds, his transition from corporate 'goldenhaired boy' 31 to radical agitator is also riddled with ambiguity.…”

mentioning

confidence: 84%

Jihadi fiction: radicalisation narratives in the contemporary novel

Morrison

2017

Textual Practice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As Ulrich Beck suggests in World at Risk, fear of Islamist extremism has become a dominant strand in contemporary perceptions of risk. In the media, a set of 'stock' radicalisation narratives have emerged in which, typically, a misguided loner is brainwashed into embracing a violent perversion of Islam. In the background, the wider Muslim community is accused of a dangerous complicity and complacency. This essay explores some notable attempts in fiction to unpick such popular radicalisation narratives. In novels by John Updike and Sunjeev Sahota, the psychological and faith dimensions of suicide bombing are a key focus, attempting to explore from the inside, how an educated young Muslim might be impelled along the path to martyrdom. In texts by Mohsin Hamid and J.M. Coetzee, the ideological staging of 'radicalisation' and 'fundamentalism' themselves is brought into question. Current counterterrorist measures include indefinite detention of US citizens without trial, while in the UK, over two million public sector workers have been recruited to the largest surveillance exercise ever codified in British law. In this context, the essay shows how recent fiction has attempted to trouble the frames of representation through which a perpetual state-of-emergency is passed off as our 'new normal'.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 84%

Jihadi fiction: radicalisation narratives in the contemporary novel

Morrison

2017

Textual Practice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The Reluctant Fundamentalist grabbed literary attention with its deployment of the less-common, Camus-inspired, dramatic monologue style (Ilott, 2013; Morey, 2011), which, as critics swiftly noted, permits no other voices (Munos, 2012: 400). From the outset, Nair distanced herself from the novel’s style: “The book is a monologue of a Pakistani man talking to an American who doesn’t say a word […] That’s not going to sell any tickets.…”

Section: Setting the Scene: Confrontation And Conciliationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This leads to the monologue style, addressed to an unnamed and voiceless American (Munos, 2012: 400), who can be interpreted as a stand-in for the (Western) target reader. This narrative technique provides the reader with Changez’s perspective, preventing him or her from hearing or seeing the American’s perspective, and thus “refusing the normalizing consolation of a dialogue” (Morey, 2011: 139). From the outset, the Pakistani “voice” is dominant.…”

Section: Setting the Scene: Confrontation And Conciliationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Not only does this dramatic monologue style hog the speaking platform, it also contains two “tricks”, as Peter Morey (2011) points out. First, the novel is “ falsely polyphonic : we ‘hear’ the voices of Erica, Jim, Wainwright and others, but they are all ventriloquized by Changez”; and second, the confessional form is not an actual disclosure or divulgence, no “true confession of former radicals”; rather, it is designed to create an atmosphere of greater confidence and confidentiality, resulting in the “novel-as-hoax” (2011: 136–9). The novel, with respect to the needs of a Western audience, points out that the Pakistani narrator must tread a very fine line when self-revealing, or confessing, because, “[t]he confession that implicates its audience is — as we say in cricket — a devilishly difficult ball to play.…”

Section: Setting the Scene: Confrontation And Conciliationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Post-9/11 re-orientalism: Confrontation and conciliation in Mohsin Hamid’s and Mira Nair’sThe Reluctant Fundamentalist

Lau

Mendes

2016

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:This article offers a comparative reading of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the novel and the adaptation, looking at the ways these texts represent changing Western public perceptions towards Pakistan and vice-versa along the temporal axis 2001-2007-2012. Both novel and film are informed by the post-9/11 distrust of the Muslim other. Mohsin Hamid's novel was begun before 9/11 and published seven years later, in 2007; Mira Nair's film adaptation followed in 2012, with a premiere at the Venice Film Festival (as the opening film) and the Toronto Film Festival. Ostensibly more conciliatory than Hamid's novel, Nair's film adaptation attempts to build bridges, stressing the tragedy of cultural suspicion and mistrust that besets the relationships between Pakistan and the US, endeavouring to open and facilitate dialogue. Despite utilizing spaces of ambiguity to expose the dangers of binary thinking, both novel and film ultimately demonstrate that representations are still unable to escape the loop of orientalism and re-orientalism, highlighting the tension of how East and West continue as locked into this circular mode of relational identity.http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tjcl The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

show abstract

“…Recent studies on Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie focus on male characters (Chambers, 2018) and ideologies representations (Shaheen et al, 2018). At the same context, previous studies upon Muslim diaspora after 9/11 focus into multidimensionality of Muslim political views and problematize historical contextualization in viewing global disparities (John dan Smith, 2010, Morey, 2011, Azeem, 2016, Morrison, 2017, and Sadaf, 2018. Meanwhile, recent studies which focus on issue of identity toward Muslim diaspora do not considered spatial issues and complexities of religion discourses (Landis, 2016, Shirazi, 2018, and Kanwal, 2015.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Muslim Diasporic Identities in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire (2017)

Rivaldy

Budiman

Tambunan

2019

IRHS

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Beside accepted with surprise across the world, the winning of Brexit referendum also brings up the tangled web into the United Kingdom’s political and cultural realms. Recent studies mention there is correlation between the voting behavior and issues of identity, immigration, and Islamophobia. Kamila Shamsie alludes these issues in her latest novel, Home Fire (2017). By focusing on three main protagonists, this close-textual analysis examines how Pakistani diasporic community construct their identities within the novel. To support the analysis, this article draws upon Hall’s identity theory (1990) and Bhabha’s Unhomely (1992). Research findings show how Shamsie’s novel represents heterogeneity within Pakistani Muslims diasporic identities, rather than frame them within single collective identity. Therefore, the novel criticizes Eurocentric biases point of view by portraying Muslim female protagonists’ fluid identities while defending their Muslimness by using veil and praying to God. On the other hand, the novel maintains established stereotype by drawing Muslim male protagonist’s affiliation with Daesh as representation of radical group to problematize the notion of radicalism.

show abstract

“The rules of the game have changed”: Mohsin Hamid’sThe Reluctant Fundamentalistand post‐9/11 fiction

Cited by 84 publications

References 6 publications

Jihadi fiction: radicalisation narratives in the contemporary novel

Jihadi fiction: radicalisation narratives in the contemporary novel

Post-9/11 re-orientalism: Confrontation and conciliation in Mohsin Hamid’s and Mira Nair’sThe Reluctant Fundamentalist

Muslim Diasporic Identities in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire (2017)

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About