The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a short novel written by Mohsin Hamid and published in 2007. The narration is a drammatic monologue of Changez, a young Pakistani man whose life is a continue effort to live between Eastern and Western cultures. Indeed the purpouse of the writer is to bring to surface an Eastern point of view on integration in the US and the 9\11 scenario. The novel is mainly focused on the contrapposition between the two worlds after the Twin Tower's collapse, caused by Americans' fear. Americans' sense of identity was deeply hurt by the tragedy, as they noticed that the US wasn't really the invincible country they thought it was. 

The intelligent reader can immediately notice that the writer wants him to understand the existence of different points of view for an event. In my opinion that's the most important message that somebody gains after reading the novel. 

Personally I didn't enjoy really much the novel. I' m pretty sure that Hamid tried to play a difficult game dealing with the contrast between Eastern and Western cultures, because the matter is highly thorny. Indeed the theme is really current after several terroristic attacks in Paris, Berlin, Barcellona and Nice, all happened many years after the publication of the novel. I'm not afraid to say that Hamid lost the game, and in the following paragraph I'm going to explain why. 

What I can't stand about the novel is the implicit willpower of the writer to idealise the Global Citizen in a world where it is impossible to develop it. In the current world marked by two world wars, racial persecutions, military tirannies and civil clashes, it results impossible to spread ideals of global peace and harmony. I know it may sound unpopular but human beings need to get rid of the myth of the Global Citizen because it is pure utopia. As a matter of fact the same Changez wasn't able to hold back a smile after he saw the Towers collapse on his television, because as he is an Arabian his mind is used to look with suspect at the Western World. Hamid tried to make the reader understand what I'm saying with the very last scene of the novel, where the listener of Changez's monologue seems to pull out a gun from his jacket. That's a really nice try, but in the only fact he considers the figure of the Global Citizen as the one to aim for, he makes a huge mistake. I must admit that nowadays, as I said before, it is totally impossible to picture a world of respect and peace, and I'm not glad in saying this. I used to believe in these values, but as I grew up I realized that utopia and reality are two parallel lines. 

In conclusion Hamid tried to write an interesting novel especially for the themes he wanted to deal with. But he makes the terrible mistake to analyse aspects that are unable to coexist with the current world. As a result,in certain parts of the novel, the writer(without doing it by purpouse) uses a tedious and boring rhetoric that has nothing to do with the real world and that appears meaningless.