Move to the City. Get an Education. Don’t Fall in Love. Avoid Idealists. Be Prepared to Use Violence.
These early chapter headings in Mohsin Hamid's brief, brisk and flickeringly brilliant new novel, disguised as a self-help book, establish the trajectory of its protagonist – addressed simply as "you" – as he replaces rural destitution with corrupt wealth in an unidentified Asian metropolis that is most likely the author's own birthplace, Lahore, in Pakistan.
Selling bottled tap water and food that’s past its expiry date, “you” is a man who’s prepared to learn any lesson that will help him build his business empire, even if it takes him away from the embodiment of his romantic dreams, the unnamed “pretty girl” who has found her own one-way ticket out of their home village.
Self-help books are not usually as well-written as this, nor do they dispense their advice with as much wit and self- deprecation. The story the novel tells of rags, riches and brutal inequality is not a new one, and the self-help conceit is not unlike the similarly episodic gameshow device in Slumdog Millionaire , but the mordant playfulness of Hamid's voice is all his own.
He is a clear-sighted observer of the way "rising Asia" works in its modern superdynamic incarnation. As in his previous novels, the limited choices available to the characters are starkly illustrated and a potentially tragic romance is set up. But while Moth Smoke (2000), a prescient pre-9/11 story of an aspiring loser caught between Pakistan's decadent elite and the religious backlash, and the Booker-shortlisted The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), which follows an immigrant's journey from prodigy to terrorist, were tales of defeat and bitter obsession, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is more resigned to the new economic dispensation.
Unlike Hamid’s other antiheroes, “you” and “the pretty girl” are not made for maudlin regrets, and, whatever their crimes and compromises, they retain our sympathy as they cross paths, lose contact, get older and then, in unexpected circumstances, reconnect. In the end, Hamid’s new book turns out to be less satirical and provocative than its predecessors, and more straightforward and human too.
Giles Newington is Assistant Literary Editor.
