Post university he lands a fine job in an American company, yet the nostalgia he has for Pakistan never fades away. Born in a middle class Pakistani family, Chengiz moves to America to study in the premium Princeton at the age of eighteen. To understand Chengiz, the fundamentalist, it requires going back to his past, his reluctance in being a fundamentalist and finally conforming to his own religious fundamentalism. Not just Chengiz bu many more like him who only get written about in literature. This write up focuses on the ‘making’ of a fundamentalist. 9/11 becomes the most important trope that runs through the novel.

Changez narrates to this American acquaintance all about his graduation from Princeton University, his lucrative career at Underwood Samson, his uncertain relation with the American Erica and later he zooms in on the 9/11 tragedy that changes his life in many ways. The novel opens with and is narrated by the protagonist Chengiz, in conversation with an unnamed American sitting down to tea in Lahore. Among this, Mohsin Hamid’s ‘Reluctant Fundamentalist’ is an outstanding work that is written in a fictional autobiography style and it captures the sentiments of both worlds, the American and the Islamic world. In the wake of the post 9/11 period, the world of literature saw large proportions of work centered around this tragedy. Ever since 9/11 has been a much studied and written area.

The fall of the Twin Towers shook the world. The given quote sets the premise for Mohsin Hamid’s, Reluctant Fundamentalist. “People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.”

The reluctant fundamentalist book pages