This is my second book by Hamid, and I am equally drawn to his style of manipulative narrative; that is, he is open-handed with what he is up to. Readers trust that the conceits he offers (dark magical closets in Exit West, placing the reader into the tense Pakistani scene here) will have a worthy enough pay-off, and not the slam-bang shocker “Gotcha” moments of an M. Night Shyamalan or O. Henry story. 

More importantly, though, Hamid invites his readers in more closely than is comfortable. The refugee crisis is worth thinking about but only if we keep it “over there,” at a distance. Anti-Americanism is safely judged as the evil thoughts of terrorists, not from anyone who has met our culture personally. 

Here, the entire novel is told word-for-word to the American reader who is invited to sit across the table in a Lahore cafe. Our protagonist Changez speaks to us intimately, revealing his story in all its personal details. We are interested but also compelled to listen, trapped by the story in the paranoid-inducing space. Changez’s words are polite, gracious, overlooking or forgiving our suspicions, but they also contain a bit too often the innuendo of quite a different narrative.

Yes, there is another large narrative here beneath this monologue, and we must ask about our level of certainty, how much of the story is true, and in what ways are we–as readers and guest for tea–implicated, responsible, for it? So as Hamid unwinds his story, his larger purpose becomes evident the more we are wrapped in the pages.

And it almost works flawlessly. Is it enough of a story to exonerate Changez of our suspicions of him? I wasn’t sure. Did I find myself implicated? Not as much as I suspect was the intention. Was the attack more effectively targeted upon American capitalism and those caught in it? Absolutely. But in a subplot parallel, we have another question entirely: what deaths must we grieve, and what trauma those of us who experience them?

I’m completely ready to read everything else he has written in the meantime. And for those who are interested in the film, know that Hamid had a strong hand in the screenplay adaptation and that director Mira Nair is a true talent, capturing and celebrating the Pakistani culture. Even so, in making a film that offers the action audiences demand, we lose almost entirely the metafictional reader immersion in trade for some new adventure subplots which ultimately weaken the impact of the novel. Even so, on its own, the film is a worthy watch with plenty of tensionAs a literary term, I often use this in place of "conflict" ... More remaining at that table over tea.

Here’s Hamid from the “Making of” documentary on both the book and film: