Mohsin Hamid

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About Mohsin Hamid
Mohsin Hamid is the author of four novels -- Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, and Exit West -- and a book of essays, Discontent and Its Civilizations.
His writing has been translated into forty languages, featured on bestseller lists, and adapted for the cinema.
Born in Lahore, he has spent about half his life there and much of the rest in London, New York, and California.
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Books By Mohsin Hamid
At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with a suspicious, and possibly armed, American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful meeting. . .
Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by Underwood Samson, an elite firm that specializes in the “valuation” of companies ripe for acquisition. He thrives on the energy of New York and the intensity of his work, and his infatuation with regal Erica promises entrée into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore.
For a time, it seems as though nothing will stand in the way of Changez’s meteoric rise to personal and professional success. But in the wake of September 11, he 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 perhaps even love.
Elegant and compelling, Mohsin Hamid’s second novel is a devastating exploration of our divided and yet ultimately indivisible world.
“Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard: I am a lover of America. I noticed that you were looking for something; more than looking, in fact you seemed to be on a mission, and since I am both a native of this city and a speaker of your language, I thought I might offer you my services as a bridge.”
—from The Reluctant Fundamentalist
“It was as if Hamid knew what was going to happen to America and the world, and gave us a road map to our future… At once terrifying and … oddly hopeful.” —Ayelet Waldman, The New York Times Book Review
“Moving, audacious, and indelibly human.” —Entertainment Weekly, “A” rating
The New York Times bestselling novel: an astonishingly visionary love story that imagines the forces that drive ordinary people from their homes into the uncertain embrace of new lands, from the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and the forthcoming The Last White Man.
In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors—doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through. . . .
Exit West follows these remarkable characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time.
Moth Smoke, Mohsin Hamid’s deftly conceived first novel, immediately marked him as an uncommonly gifted and ambitious young literary talent to watch when it was published in 2000. It tells the story of Daru Shezad, who, fired from his banking job in Lahore, begins a decline that plummets the length of Hamid’s sharply drawn, subversive tale.
Fast-paced and unexpected, Moth Smoke was ahead of its time in portraying a contemporary Pakistan far more vivid and complex than the exoticized images of South Asia then familiar to the West. It established Mohsin Hamid as an internationally important writer of substance and imagination and the premier Pakistani author of our time, a promise he has amply fulfilled with each successive book. This debut novel, meanwhile, remains as compelling and deeply relevant to the moment as when it appeared more than a decade ago.
"A globalized version of The Great Gatsby . . . [Hamid's] book is nearly that good." –Alan Cheuse, NPR
"Marvelous and moving." –TIME Magazine
From the internationally bestselling author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West, the boldly imagined tale of a poor boy’s quest for wealth and love
His first two novels established Mohsin Hamid as a radically inventive storyteller with his finger on the world’s pulse. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia meets that reputation—and exceeds it. The astonishing and riveting tale of a man’s journey from impoverished rural boy to corporate tycoon, it steals its shape from the business self-help books devoured by ambitious youths all over “rising Asia.” It follows its nameless hero to the sprawling metropolis where he begins to amass an empire built on that most fluid, and increasingly scarce, of goods: water. Yet his heart remains set on something else, on the pretty girl whose star rises along with his, their paths crossing and recrossing, a lifelong affair sparked and snuffed and sparked again by the forces that careen their fates along.
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a striking slice of contemporary life at a time of crushing upheaval. Romantic without being sentimental, political without being didactic, and spiritual without being religious, it brings an unflinching gaze to the violence and hope it depicts. And it creates two unforgettable characters who find moments of transcendent intimacy in the midst of shattering change.
Mohsin Hamid’s brilliant, moving, and extraordinarily clever novels have not only made him an international bestseller, they have earned him a reputation as a “master critic of the modern global condition” (Foreign Policy). His stories are at once timeless and of-the-moment, and his themes are universal: love, language, ambition, power, corruption, religion, family, identity. Here he explores this terrain from a different angle in essays that deftly counterpoise the personal and the political, and are shot through with the same passion, imagination, and breathtaking shifts of perspective that gives his fiction its unmistakable electric charge.
A “water lily” who has called three countries on three continents his home—Pakistan, the birthplace to which he returned as a young father; the United States, where he spent his childhood and young adulthood; and Britain, where he married and became a citizen—Hamid writes about overlapping worlds with fluidity and penetrating insight. Whether he is discussing courtship rituals or pop culture, drones or the rhythms of daily life in an extended family compound, he transports us beyond the scarifying headlines of an anxious West and a volatile East, beyond stereotype and assumption, and helps to bring a dazzling diverse global culture within emotional and intellectual reach.
“Searing, exhilarating … reimagines Kafka’s iconic The Metamorphosis for our racially charged era.” Hamilton Cain, Oprah Daily
From the New York Times-bestselling author of Exit West, a story of love, loss, and rediscovery in a time of unsettling change.
One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’s skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends, and family will greet them.Some see the transformations as the long-dreaded overturning of the established order that must be resisted to a bitter end. In many, like Anders’s father and Oona’s mother, a sense of profound loss and unease wars with profound love. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different shading: a chance at a kind of rebirth--an opportunity to see ourselves, face to face, anew.
In Mohsin Hamid’s “lyrical and urgent” prose (O Magazine), The Last White Man powerfully uplifts our capacity for empathy and the transcendence over bigotry, fear, and anger it can achieve.
國界消失了,打開一扇門,就能穿梭到未知的城市,走進他人的生命……
當今世界最需要的一本小說
走進這扇門,我們終能在不安之中,看見溫柔
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如果你想讀一本代表這個時代的小說,那麼《門》堪稱完美無瑕。
──《波士頓環球報》
小說的情緒重擊,讓人掩卷後數日無法忘懷。作者不只是在寫一本小說,他是問我們,究竟想生活在什麼樣的世界?──英國《書商》雜誌編輯選書
在一座沒有名字的城市,獨立的娜迪亞,遇見了內斂的謝依德。他們周遭的世界正劇烈變動,家中的窗不再能眺望遠方,而是子彈隨時可能穿越的路徑。剛萌芽的愛情,被迫面對生死永別的殘酷。
動盪的城市開始斷水斷電,關於「門」的耳語逐漸傳開:據說有某些特殊的門,踏進去以後,竟能從異國的另一扇門出來,帶人逃離
Un profundo retrato del camino que lleva a un inmigrante del sueño americano a la disidencia pakistaní. Una novela con una sólida posición ética que nos hace plantearnos en qué mundo queremos vivir.
En un bullicioso mercado de Lahore, Changez le explica a un desconocido de Estados Unidos cómo él mismo encarnó el sueño americano: dejó Pakistán, estudió en Princeton y trabajó como asesor financiero en Nueva York. Instalado en la élite, acostumbrado a pasear del brazo de la bella Erica por los mejores restaurantes, todo cambió con el 11-S. Su idilio americano se desmoronó con las torres gemelas. Sin trabajo, se dejó crecer la barba mientras veía cómo su país de acogida utilizaba su país de origen como peón en una guerra donde la muerte se aliaba con el mercado capitalista.
Con la fluidez de un thriller y la profundidad de un tratado político, Hamid demuestra en este monólogo que la violencia no nace por combustión espontánea, sino que llega al final de un goteo de sospechas, torturas y bombardeos.
La crítica ha dicho...
«El fundamentalista reticente es una novela valiente, con la fluidez de un relato policial y una notable clarividencia política.»
Rafael Narbona, El Cultural
«Una de esas novelas dolorosamente ciertas que te hacen agradecer ser lector.»
Junot Díaz
«Los tiempos extremos llaman a reacciones extremas, a escrituras extremas. Hamid ha hecho algo extraordinario con esta novela.»
The Washington Post
«Uno de los escritores más ingeniosos y dotados de su generación.»
The New York Times
«Hamid hace gala de una clara e infalible compresión de nuestro tiempo y de sus cuestiones más urgentes.»
The New Yorker
«Un thriller impresionantemente inteligente. [...] Mientras "guerra contra el terror" retumba, este es un libro afilado e importante. Ejecutado con un control frío y fresco, es un microcosmos de laatmósfera desospecha entre Oriente y Occidente. Una obra que entretiene al mismo tiempo que te hace pensar.»
The Telegraph
Avec cette histoire d’amour poignante sur fond d’exil et de crise migratoire, Mohsin Hamid nous prouve par son inventivité de conteur qu’un sujet d’actualité n’exclut pas la poésie ni même la magie. Une fable contemporaine et intemporelle.
« L’un des auteurs les plus talentueux et inventifs de sa génération. » The New York Times
Bienvenidos a Occidente es una bellísima fábula sobre los refugiados, una novela con una sólida posición ética que nos cuestiona en qué mundo queremos vivir. Por Mohsin Hamid, uno de los autores más reputados de la actualidad.
La historia de amor furtivo de Nadia y Said tiene lugar en una ciudad llena de puntos de control y bombas. Es un laberinto humano donde, al empezar la guerra civil, surgen extrañas habladurías: «rumores sobre puertas que podían llevarlo a uno a otro lugar, concretamente a lugares remotos, alejados de aquella trampa mortal de país».
En una historia épica de tremenda actualidad, esta insólita pareja de amantes huirá para recalar primero en Mikonos y luego ir desplazándose hacia el oeste, compartiendo el periplo vital de millones de personas que sufren en sus carnes el rechazo (o, en ocasiones, la bienvenida) de Occidente.
Reseñas:
«Dinámica y lapidaria. Una novela absorbente.»
Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
«Elegante y actual. Hamid es un escritor tan romántico como político: en el centro de sus novelas siempre late una historia de amor.»
Louis Wise, The Sunday Times
«Una obra maestra, que estira los límites de lo verosímil para hablar del lugar en el mundo que ocupan inmigrantes y refugiados. Pero es también una novela asentada en lo real. Un libro bellísimo.»
Michael Chabon
«En el corazón de la novela, la cuestión moral sobre los derechos migratorios llega donde ninguna otra obra ha llegado todavía.»
Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic
«Impresionante. Bienvenidos a Occidente confirma la reputación de Hamid como ventrílocuo genial e implicado en los asuntos más urgentes de nuestro tiempo.»
Andrew Motion, The Guardian
«Extraordinaria.»
Zadie Smith
«Lo que sitúa a Bienvenidos a Occidente en la élite de la novela contemporánea es su manera de narrar,como ningún otro libro, lo que está sucediendo hoy y forma parte ya de la Historia.»
Davide Piacenza, Rivista Studio
«Necesitamos más escritores como Hamid. No nos conduce a la utopía, sino a la puerta de un futuro cercano donde se entrevén siluetas de forasteros: solo hay que cruzar el umbral y conocerlos.»
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Lecteur, lectrice : tu viens d’acquérir le nouveau roman de Mohsin Hamid. Grand bien t’en a pris. Car celui-ci va te permettre de découvrir comment t’en mettre plein les poches en Asie mutante, comme le héros de cette édifiante et rocambolesque épopée : né dans la plus insigne pauvreté, au cœur de la campagne d’un pays anonyme du continent indien, il va monter à la ville, parfaire son éducation, rencontrer l’amour, flirter avec la tentation politique, puis faire fortune par le plus inattendu des moyens. Ce sont, en une poignée de pages, quatre-vingts années d’une vie d’homme que tu tiens entre tes mains – « un homme fait de tous les hommes et qui les vaut tous et que vaut n’importe qui » à l’heure de la mondialisation galopante. Et si cette fable contemporaine et universelle te fait verser quelques larmes, ne t’en fais pas, car celles-ci jailliront avant tout du plaisir et de l’émotion que tu t’apprêtes à éprouver en lisant ce petit joyau de littérature.