L’Asia siamo noi. With Mohsin Hamid, Premio Terzani 2014.

L’Asia siamo noi: title of a meeting between Mohsin Hamid (writer and opinionist of many international publications) and Michel Guglielmo Torri (Professor of Modern History of Asia in Turin), moderator is Gigi Riva (reporter of the Espresso).

Novel’s title: “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia”

The novel is about Asia’s globalization. It highlights some universal information: economy has globalized recently, after the First World War. The last twenty years were characterized by another globalization.

The novel is settled in a unspecified city that is presumably Lahore. The story is about some people that are living in a city changing and it tells the reader the changings that those people have as regards their feelings.

Who describes very well his own city, when he speaks about feelings he is speaking about the entire humankind. If we think in these terms, can we consider Italy as Asia?

Hamid refers to his personal experience: he was born in Pakistan and, when he was three years old, his family moved to America. At the age of nine years, he came back to Pakistan and then moved again to America when he was eighteen. After this he went also to London and then again in Pakistan.

He feels a transforms when he travels à he insert himself in the society but contemporary he remains a stranger à universal VS different values à all world’s people belongs to humankind à everyday ways of acting of all people present come common features à for this reason the reader feels himself bound to the story even if that is settled in a country far from him.

In his previous novel (“The Reluctant Fundamentalist”), the foreground is occupied by the contradictions that come tu surface between the protagonist’s religious values, characterized by their past connotation, and the economical part that bounds him to the present time.

Which is the Asian social role?

Some parts of the nation are characterized by deep cultural differences à it is difficult to construct a general reflection à between the states of the greater influence, some are completely Asian (China, India and Japan), the others are Asian only a little (USA and Russia) à some of them are in decadence (USA economical crisis, Russia demographic crisis) other are rising (Japan economical rising, China and India demographic and economic growth) à there is a deep connection between the American and Chinese economic systems (economic war)

How do we perceive Pakistan from Italy? In Hamid’s book it is described as a country developing and developing, the previous novel was dedicated to terrorism. How do this two factors coexist? Return to fundamentalism bound to growing will of the country. It is a contradictory country, it doesn’t have a single characteristic, as any other country. The opinion  that Italian people have of Pakistan is wrong because they presume there is a single Pakistan à there are so many Pakistan as many people who live there à trend to localism and trend to globalization à economic need to be global and personal need to be localà nobody has a single identity

Nationalistic trend incising in the Indian middle class and also in all Asia (Japan, China, Pakistan e Syria) à as regards the present situation India and China have nationalistic pressures.

Asia can be seen as the future world’s leader, but is it ready for this? Has it done a discard respect the other continents?

Which Asia’s part can be the leader of the economical world? The only one is China à Japan has never been able to conduct an independent policy, it has always been influenced by the United States

It could lead the world only if it is able to put forward a more open policy à the novel is about economics focused on the market but with a love that is not based on ownership (uninterested)à Islam was taught in the form of love poems à the novel tends to be one of these