In the present text I am going to discuss the function of the first chapter of Mohsin Hamid’s novel ”The Reluctant Fundamentalist” in order to discover its role in the context of the whole novel.

The first chapter is important because, after reading it, the reader can make some suggestions about what will be told in the following ones. Moreover the reader understands how the style of the novelist is and what the main features of the story are.

The novelist uses the first chapter to introduce setting and the main characters. The story is set in a tea bar in the Old Annarkali district in the centre of Lahore, a big city in Pakistan, where Changez, a Pakistani man, tells his story to an American man, who quite always says nothing to him. Indeed the reader discovers that the novel is a long uninterrupted one-side monologue. The reader wonders about what the reasons of the writer’s choice are, but he or she will discover certainly them going on with the reading of the novel.

The protagonist, Changez, tells the American man his story. He was a student, who left Pakistan for the USA to attend Princeton University with a scholarship he had won. After his graduation in Finance, he started working for a big consultancy firm, Underwood Samson. He enjoyed his job and he behaved and felt like an American man, even if he was a Pakistani citizen. He was perfectly integrated in New York and he believed in American values and for these reasons he was accepted by American people.

The chapter ends in a positive way and lets the reader think and imagine what will happen to the protagonist in the following chapters, increasing his or her curiosity, that makes him/her moving on with the reading.