Get Ready for More Mohsin Hamid in 2013

I'm a bit disappointed that the film version of Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist (releasing next spring) hasn't been getting better buzz, but it I suspect it will be must-see for our Loyal Readers regardless. But something I am really excited about is his new book, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia also coming out next year. Read this great short story, “The Third-Born”, taken from the novel in The New Yorker. Then follow up with their Q. & A.

I can’t shake the idea that a novel is like a dance, with two people dancing, writer and reader, and it’s a bit strange to pretend I’m doing it by myself. This time around, after a couple of failed drafts, I gave in to the second person completely, and I found it pretty liberating as a form: you can move from a hyper-intimate first-person-like perspective to a cosmically removed third-person-like one very easily. It seems to invite that kind of riffing.

As reported in the New York Daily News, Hamid spoke recently with author Jay McInerney about writing the book,

Hamid described how he had felt he needed to exorcise a self-censorship in the writing of the upcoming “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia,” — which takes the form of a self-help book and charts a boy’s rise from rural urchin to corporate tycoon — due to a fear of angering Pakistani authorities. McInerney asked: “Do you ever have a tiny Salman Rushdie on your shoulder telling you ‘be careful’?”

“In a way it’s the American writers who are atypical,” said Hamid, “in most of the world, there’s a whole bunch of stuff you have to be careful about, and so yeah, there are many constraints on speech in Pakistan. The flipside of that is if someone will kill you for saying something, it means what you’re saying matters...even slightly pushing the boundary feels worthwhile...I have not received any kind of threat” he added “but I’m careful.”

In other Mohsin Hamid news, Moth Smoke (which we also enjoyed) is being set to film as well. And, add him to the list of our favorite authors who love the hobbits-- see evidence here and in this reflection on Hamid's childhood journey from culture to culture and how it fed his interest in language and imaginary lands.

Rights Readers Round-up

Prize winners corner:

• Edwidge Danticat (Brother, I'm Dying) won a MacArthur "genius" grant. Her reaction and plans here.

• Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) writes about the connections between the Iranian recipients of this years Anna Politkovskaya Award and the award's namesake and previous winner Natalya Estemirova.

• Memorial wins the Sakharov prize.

• Muhammad Yunus (Banker To The Poor) and Wangari Maathai (Unbowed) defend President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. Nick Kristof suggests Greg Mortenson and Paul Farmer as alternative winners. Foreign Policy runs down a list of Nobel losers including Rights Readers faves Eleanor Roosevelt and Ken Saro-Wiwa.

• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is the most read book on the New York City subway.

Forthcoming:

• Greg Mortenson has a new book coming out for your holiday gift list.

• Ha Jin's novel Waiting is to be made into a movie and Mira Nair's next project is the film version of Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

• Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International (and Nicolas Kristof) talk about the current state of the human rights movement at NPR's On Point. A very interesting discussion, though we don't learn much about Khan's new book, (The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights).

• John Conroy (Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture) has written a play about the Chicago police torture scandal. Also, check out this provocative article about his personal experience as a crime victim.

• Dinaw Mengestu (The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears) chats about the cities he's lived in and his next book:
  
  Interview with Dinaw Mengestu from Granta magazine on Vimeo.
  
  

On the issues:

• Bill Moyers interviews Dr. Jim Yong Kim (see Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains) about the connections between our current national healthcare debate and global health issues.

• Ted Conover (Newjack)is interviewed by On the Media about the ethics of his undercover reporting at Sing Sing prison.

• Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) discusses poverty and the recession on NPR's On Point and then stands up for the grumpy among us on the The Daily Show.

• Meanwhile looking ahead to Copenhagen and the climate change talks, Orville Schell (Mandate Of Heaven) writes for the NYT- The Thaw at the Roof of the World- and Mark Hertsgaard (Earth Odyssey) in the Nation- Climate Roulette. Wangari Maathai leaves us with this PSA:

Rights Readers Round-up

Just catching up on some of our Rights Readers authors:

Excellent interview with Mohsin Hamid (The Reluctant Fundamentalist) on the BBC World Book Club.

Daniel Alarcon (Lost City Radio) discusses editing a collection of short stories by Latin American writers with the The New Yorker. Names to watch for?

Arundhati Roy (The Cost of Living) on the crisis in Sri Lanka. Follow the latest on Sri Lanka on AIUSA's Human Rights Now blog.

Going back a couple months on this one, but here's a New Yorker podcast on the Politkovskaya (Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy) trial. Amnesty insight here.

Tribute to Reinaldo Arenas (Before Night Falls) at PEN World Voices. Francisco Goldman (The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop?) participated in a panel too.

Our October Author: Mohsin Hamid

Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist has his own website which handily compiles links to interviews. (You can't go wrong with NPR's Terry Gross. Random tidbits from a few others I explored follow below.) There is also a list of articles he has written, many about Pakistani politics, and a link to an "interactive" short story if you are feeling adventurous, on his site.

The author suggests future titles for Rights Readers:



I am sure he scores points with our Esteemed but Busy Readers for picking short books!

Man Booker Prize interview (wherein we also learn that Mira Nair has the film rights for the book),

There has been speculation about the meaning behind the name of your protagonist ‘Changez’. Can you clarify any meaning behind his name?

Changez is the Urdu name for Genghis, as in Genghis Khan. It is the name of a warrior, and the novel plays with the notion of a parallel between war and international finance, which is Changez’s occupation. But at the same time, the name cautions against a particular reading of the novel. Genghis attacked the Arab Muslim civilization of his time, so Changez would be an odd choice of name for a Muslim fundamentalist. In fact, Changez is something of a secular nationalist, and not particularly religious.

Harcourt,

Q: Personal and public mourning run side by side in this story of raw emotions. Changez loses his footing when he is unable to separate the two. Was it difficult to find balance as you simultaneously probed the intimate pains and passions of one man’s loss and explored an entire nation’s tragedy?

A: I believe that the personal and the political are deeply intertwined; in my own life I certainly experience them as such. I don’t set out to find a balance between the two in my novels. Instead, I try to explore the places where they intersect most powerfully. People and countries tend to blur in my fiction; both serve as symbols of the other. Which is not to say that my characters are chess pieces: I see my characters as fully human, not as mere motifs. The countries in my fiction are far from monolithic and are capable of envy, passion, and nostalgia; they are, in other words, quite like people, and I try to explore them with that sensibility.

Critical Mass, One and Two

Q: When I finished it, I felt like I had read a much longer book than I had –

A: Well it is longer; there are many ghosts in the novel in the sense that there's upwards of 1,000 pages of different manuscript lying around. There are things that Erica did and these characters did and stuff they have done and been which aren't in the book. But having written them once you can dispense with them, and then you can touch things which imply that they happened. It gives a book that iceberg quality.

For October: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

For October we have selected The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid,

At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with an uneasy American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful encounter . . .

Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by the elite valuation firm of Underwood Samson. He thrives on the energy of New York, and his budding romance with elegant, beautiful Erica promises entry into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore.

But in the wake of september 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez’s own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love.

Moshin Hamid Update

While we are on the subject of Pakistan, in contrast to our journey with Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea) Moshin Hamid (Rights Readers selection Moth Smoke) takes us on an urban journey, as interviewed in the Guardian,

"I'm a big city dweller," he explains. "The world has become majority urban and this urban narrative is rapidly becoming the typical human narrative. I would say Moth Smoke was an urban third world novel, much more than a southern Asian novel. A magazine editor in Chile who had read the Spanish translation phoned me up out the blue and said 'This book is about Santiago!' which shows how a city can resonate across the world."

Looking forward to reading his latest in the near future.

Pasadena Event: Women's Day Film Screening

Saturday, March 10 11:00 a.m.
Laemmle's One Colorado Theatre
42 Miller Alley
Old Pasadena, CA 91103

Amnesty International USA's Western Region & Stop Violence Against Women Coordinator Sakinah Kahn are pleased to support:

A Screening of "View from a Grain of Sand" Followed by a Q & A with filmmaker Meena Nanji.

Tickets: $10

Combining vérité footage, interviews and archival material, Los Angeles based film maker, Meena Nanji has fashioned a harrowing, thought-provoking, yet intimate portrait of the plight of Afghan women in the last 30 years from the rule of King Mohammed Zahir Shah to the current Hamid Karzai government to the activist work of RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. Over a period of five years, she spent months in a refugee camp in Pakistan , where she documented the efforts of three women to rebuild their lives and help others in the process: Shapire, a teacher; Roeena, a physician; and Wajeeha, a social activist.

See this Variety review for more about the film. And please visit the Afghan Women's Mission website, a unique Pasadena-based human rights resource!

Seating is limited. Please call 323-632-5558 for tickets.

Crafts from RAWA's Income Generation Project will be on sale at the event. All proceeds will benefit RAWA's vital social programs.

For more information please call (323) 632-5558 or send an email to rawasupporterssouthcal@hotmail.com.