His new novel, a dark Horatio Alger-style story, follows an unnamed protagonist-hero through eight decades as he journeys from an impoverished village (also unnamed, but obviously in Pakistan) to a sprawling city, acquires an education, makes and then loses a fortune in bottled water, and is seduced by a pretty girl who runs away with another man the next day. It was a suspenseful, post-9/11 meditation as well as an intricate exploration of identity, and it gave evidence of Hamid's virtuosity.
His first, Moth Smoke, won the Betty Trask Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award, and his second, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a monologue delivered by a young Princeton-educated Pakistani, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid's previous two novels were artful award-winners.
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