In the present text I am going to analyse the first chapter of Mohsin Hamid’s “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” in order to convey its function in the novel.

The chapter’s main purpose is to introduce the protagonist of the story, Changez. The novelist gives information about the character’s identity and  his experience in the United States: once he left his homeland to attend Princeton university, he joined the high-profile firm Underwood Samson after graduation.

In the first pages it is evident that the novel is actually a dramatic monologue where the speaker is Changez himself talking with an anonymous American in a local in Lahore, Pakistan. This is a narrative technique which allows the reader to identify with him and to define his personality: he appears to be a clever and polite man who refers to his interlocutor using a formal language ("Excuse me Sir..., May I...").

The chapter is fundamental to understand the structure of the novel and to portray the protagonist’s status when he wanted nothing but to experience the “American dream”. It is the beginning of a psychological development which characterizes the entire novel: he describes himself as "a lover of America", but why does he eventually end in Packistan, implicitly criticizing the United States?