A Review by Frances

 This book was selected as a World Book Night title in February & was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007.  It is a fascinating book.  I have not been to Pakistan, but Keith & I did go to India in the 1970s and we did meet people very like the narrator of this book – determined to talk to European strangers, polite but very insistent and curious to the point of nosiness.

 

We, the reader, take the part of an anonymous American, possibly a tourist (although as the story progresses it seems probably not), as we are inveigled into taking first of all tea, and then supper with a very determined, bearded stranger – a University Professor who knows the United States well.

 

As Changez (for that is his rather unlikely name) develops his story and prevents us from moving away, we learn about his education and his life in the United States, his success working with an American International finance company and his love for Erica, a rather damaged American girl.

 

The story develops rather like a Shakespearean soliloquy, the reader taking the part of the audience.  As dusk falls and the skies darken, so does the tone of the story and we move from Changez’s attempts to emulate his mentor, Jim, and become assimilated into the American way of life, to his realisation that he will ever be the outsider and acceptance of his own background and destiny.

 

The prose is beautifully written and my only criticism is the detailed descriptions of Changez’s sexual encounters with Erica – important to the plot, but slightly out of character for the otherwise reserved character of Changez, who never comes to terms with the brashness of American Society.

 

An important, thoughtful book which is also a pleasure to read.