Obviously the Middle East is going through some tumultuous changes. This has affected every person who has any connection with the region on any level. For some it has meant leaving town, for others, it has meant not wanting to go back. But what has happened for all, including those who do not have a relationship with the region, is that something has cracked, a certain consciousness has opened. In Egypt, the barrier of fear and silence was broken down, people united with their goal; while in Bahrain, this fear still stands against the cry for social development. Although consciousness is now shifting in the Arab world, it only brings to light the extent at which people have taken self-censorship as second nature and the inability to question regimes for granted.

Recently, I’ve been introduced to a collective blog/discussion forum (similar to this one, I suppose) that stands to open up this very point even more. Attempting to counter the stifled ability to express, Arabs.com interestingly points out that we must admit that we are ‘oppressed’ in order to actually combat that oppression. In his ‘message’, the founder of the website states his support for the freedom of choice and expression as well as the need for platforms without bias or guardianship.

As social/web media goes, this forum is being used as a tool to attempt to overcome that. But just as everything it is an experiment, as some of us have not overcome the fear. I, myself, have posted under a fake name in an attempt to dog attention of the “wrong” kind. I find this to be an interesting experiment, relying on bloggers and encouraging citizen journalists, it presents a public space that can be used in whatever way deemed appropriate by the user, but with a bottom line of encouraging a free consciousness. I find this to be a positive thing.

Arabs.com is having a event/tweet up (#arabstweetup) here in London on June 29. Anyone who wants to participate can contact them via twitter on @ARABSdotCOM.

Read the founder’s message here.
Sign up to blog and join discussions and threads at: http://www.arabs.com/

I saw somewhere that George Orwell once said, “every joke is a tiny revolution.”  In the last week of this current wave of up rise throughout the Arab world, it has been the humour in social protest that has fascinated, and perhaps even confused, me.  What role do these comedic characters play?

Global Voices have reported on two of these funny characters, the first being Egypt’s “the man behind Omar Suleiman” followed by Bahrain’s “TAKBEER guy”.   The latest stint of humour comes from a YouTube sensation from Libya presenting a remix of Ghadaffi’s speech – turning his vow to fight till the bitter end into an electric mix mockery.

Each of these is funny in its own way, reminding me of the fun had with Iraq’s Information Minister back in 2003.  This ‘joke’ spawned a popular website, WeLoveTheIraqiInformationMinister.com.  It also went on to create objects/merchandise (like TAKBEER guy) by manufacturing t-shirts; ironic 1-liners: “There are no Americans in Baghdad” (Ghadaffi’s ‘Zanga, Zanga’; TAKBEER guy’s “Takbeeeer!”), and, simply put, the icon of his hard-lined face (like “The Man Behind Omar Suleiman”).  While the situation in Iraq was not a revolution compared to these, the parallels in terms of the humour can be drawn.

In today’s ongoing up rises, the mediums used to communicate, organize and spread support is on the most part digital or ‘new’ media, used in the Middle East mainly by a younger demographic.  This in a way explains the result of humourous icons.  But going a step further, perhaps each of these countries uses the comic relief towards different ends; for example, in Bahrain, TAKBEER became a part of a campaign to unite the country looking beyond the offensive sectarian discourse: sharing a laugh, may close the divide.  The money eventually raised from the t-shirt sales was to go to families of those killed on Feb. 17th. Similarly in the case of Egypt’s ‘The Man Behind Omar Suleiman”, the seriousness of the folly of Omar Suleiman, a man rejected by the opposition of Egypt, was something that brought out humour as a mechanism that enlivened the protest against the regime.  In Libya, Ghadaffi has (arguably) always been fuel for comedy; today’s YouTube generation simply took it to a new level, as a result weakening further the image of the leader as a laughable personality rather than a respectable one.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lucky enough to attend the Dubai International Film Festival for the second time, my interest was, once again, in the Arab films. I saw mostly shorts, and most of them were great: creative writing, intense acting, a range of production values, a nice diversity overall. But among the features, I noticed a new variety of films, one with a common theme: the protagonist who left to the West years ago has now come back. Using a fish-out-of-water format there is a culture clash played out by an incessant interpolation whereby the protagonist is confused and frustrated by [their own] local culture. In the post-colonial flavour, what we are left with is a premise of “man against [his own] othered society”.

This plays out in Microphone from Alexandria, a great film showcasing the immense underground musical and visual talent in the city. Here, perhaps this ‘new to town’ approach is used as a vehicle to really draw out the difficulty that the main character goes through as a producer attempting to get these artists a gig. By allowing the audience to follow the protagonist through his maze of bureaucracy, the movie illustrates the information and culture control in Egypt, a form of censorship that should be broken away from in order to celebrate the arts and promote individual expression.

But the premise I speak of is more clearly played out in Transit Cities, a Jordanian film about a woman who comes back from the US to Amman while going through divorce (what seems to be a cultural faux pas). In Amman, she is aggravated by the religion, she is annoyed by the globalization and disturbed by the smugness on one-side and the passivity on the other. Director of the film, Mohammed Hushki, wanted to highlight the setting of Amman as a place that is merely transit for many different people, in particular the Jordanians who have left only to come back bringing with them the idea that they are, at anytime, ready to leave again.

Hushki mentions in an article in the Jordan Times that the film is meant to show how polarized the city of Amman has become. A pious and conservative half is on one side and a globalized, Western thinking “neurosis” on the other. This premise of the film is based on this clash amidst the Ammani community and is played out through one main protagonist, Laila. She is annoyed by either side, and does not seem interested to fit in to any of it.

Laila, the character through whom we follow these ideas adds a certain layer of discomfort to the picture. Her representation of the independent liberal woman is by way of her painfully tight jeans, messy hair, cleavage popping, smoking-on- the-streets (indeed yet another cultural faux pas), and hanging out with a stereotype intellectual married ex-boyfriend while he lies to his wife about it (despite the mocking of Laila’s liberal-morale). By this point, it is the representation of the theme and the confused outlook it presents that are somewhat uneasy.

Unfortunately, however, besides this cliché and weak representation, there is some truth to it, she actually does represent a good deal of people. This film attempting to illustrate the two poles by placing a [supposedly] liberated, independent woman in the middle is uneasy because we see so much of this. There is a popular misleading and somewhat naïve expectation of what ‘development’, both social and societal should be. Based on the ideas that Hushki is presenting regarding his illustrations of the two poles, couldn’t we say that it is somewhat fantastical to believe that a changing city will be so harmonious? And looking at Laila’s reaction to the piousness of her sister and mother, isn’t it a bit narrow minded to think that those who have changed alongside the changing city are inferior? Again, unfortunately, many people do; this kind of postcolonial judgement is everywhere. Acting as a lens through which the hometown (Amman in this case) is portrayed as backwards and fanatic adds to this existing attitude. As an Arab who has gone back and forth between my ‘homeland’ and the West, I identify with that person on the screen from when I was a young teenager. At that age, I didn’t recognize the line between teenage angst and judgment of the nuances of a local cultural.

It is only at one final point during the climax where Laila’s family has a big blow-up on morality, that her sister puts her in her place. In response to her comment about going ‘back to the kitchen to cook for the kids’, her sister points out the misfortune of what her idea of being ‘cultured and liberated’ is. While she’s out being her ‘free’ self, it is her veiled, married sister who is making payments for the house that their parents live in and all else.

The film almost entirely seemed to showcase stereotypical characters that were the thorn in our protagonist’s freethinking side. She being the active female character amongst both, other passive females and even more passive males, puts her in a more daring situation, packaging her as superior to the rest, perhaps for not fitting into the two categories of Ammani society that have been presented to us: she is presented as an independent thinker that doesn’t fall into the pigeonholes that everyone else does.

So in the end I was a bit lost. While I appreciate that the filmmaker has identified a general issue that is blazing across the entire Middle East, that conflict between ‘religious dogma’ and the ‘globalized’ towards the grave point of neoliberal, the portrayal of it was skewed in its drawing the main character as a just-back-from-the-West woman with issues as the person through whose eyes we are meant to be questioning local society. The interpolation here is palpable, and although it is a story by a native of the society we are watching the film about, this society is portrayed as more of an ‘other’ society as any foreign film would. I could understand Laila’s frustrations, but I thought the portrayal and form of question was immature and disrespectful of local traits and contexts. The only voice we actually hear, again, the only eyes through which we as audiences see, is that of this “empowered” Westernized woman, which in turn completely diminishes any ‘local’ voice the film could have presented. Unlike theMicrophone case, the ‘vehicle’ here was lost to a scoffy attitude that was ultimately judgmental and adolescent in it self.

In an ongoing effort to reinvent itself, Project: Carousel is launching a new monthly feature to acquaint its readers with interesting and important people/organizations working in the field of global media and cultural studies. These people/organizations have, through their work, made some kind of a difference to the lives of people around the world – a difference that has made a difference.

A great idea.
A new technological tool or invention.
A new way to perceive the world.
Something that, we believe, simply needs to be heard and seen.

The series called Mind.Medium.Message will consist of three-part exposes:

Part 1 will offer biographies and background information and explain why these people/organizations are interesting and important.

Part 2 will look at the more general influence and contribution these people/organizations have made to the field they work in – academically, theoretically, artistically, technologically, politically.

Part 3 will provide them with a voice, featuring interviews, guest writers and artists, and offering a platform for their work.

(However, please note: this will not be an exercise in idolatry. The perspectives we provide to our chosen ones will be as multifaceted and critical as the people/organizations we profile. We will provide a platform; not an altar.)

While the list of people/organizations we have lined up is as eclectic and diverse as the contributors to Project: Carousel we believe there is no better way to begin than with somebody who – technically – is still one of us. Iranian blogger Hossein ‘Hoder’ Derakshan pursued an MA in Global Media and Postnational Communication at SOAS and, as he has yet to submit his dissertation, technically remains a SOAS student.

Hossein, however, has been detained in Iran without charges and under uncertain conditions since late last year. Therefore, coinciding with the one-year anniversary of his imprisonment, we are launching our Mind.Medium.Message series with a profile of Hossein and the difference he has made. We want to use this launch as a platform to highlight issues around his confinement (as well as that of other prisoners) in Iran and to get SOAS students to pressure the SOAS administration to issue a formal statement on his behalf. (EDITORS NOTE: because of changes in circumstances regarding Hossein’s current status, we have withdrawn this part of our project.)

We encourage you to all get involved.  We will shortly tell you how.

**

Hossein ‘Hoder’ Derakhshan is a journalist, Internet activist, and blogger, nicknamed the Blogfather for spawning Iran’s spectacular blogging revolution. Since the mid-1990s, he has been advocating the use of the Internet as a means for social and political reform in Iran.

Born in Tehran in 1975, Hossein is the oldest of three siblings in a religious family. Hossein spent most of his primary and secondary school years at Nikan Institute, a private religious school whose strict dress code and lack of humanities surely irritated him: ‘I never do things I have to do. I’ve always resisted what’s forced on me. I’m a rebel.’ Hossein transferred from Nikan to a public school before his final year in 1992, trading religion classes for the pop culture of Tehran.

In 1995, his brother’s friend introduced him to the wonders of a computer connected to a modem. This may not have been the Internet (yet), but it was a fascinating new world with forums and chat rooms that supported Persian.

Hossein started out as a journalist writing about Internet and digital culture for a popular reformist newspaper, Asr-e Azadegan, in 1999. When his paper was closed down by conservative judicial authorities in 2000, Hossein moved to Canada and started working for the BBC Persian service in Toronto.

In September 2001, Hossein set up one of the first blogs in Persian, having, according to Wired, ‘figured out a way to combine Unicode and Blogger.com’s free tools to handle Persian characters’.

In response to a request from a reader, Hossein created a simple how-to-blog guide in Persian. As Nasrin Alavi writes in We Are Iran, ‘with the modest aim of giving other Iranians a voice, he set free an entire community’. In 2003, the Guardian wrote that Hossein’s ‘step-by-step guide to creating a Persian weblog should take much of the credit for inspiring thousands of Iranians to start their own blogs.’

And so the Blogfather was born.

For several years his blog, Editor: Myself, written both in Persian and English, was the most popular blog in Iran but in 2004 it was blocked as Hossein broke one of the iron rules of the Iranian press and criticized spiritual leader Khamenei.

By that time Hossein had immersed himself in the politics of Iran and the Internet: he had founded Stop censoring us, a blog to watch the situation of Internet censorship in Iran; he spoke repeatedly about Internet censorship, methods to get around filters, and the use of wikis to aid political reform and the growth of democracy.

It was breaking taboos like these that got Hossein in trouble with the Iranian police who detained and interrogated him when he visited Iran for the first time since emigrating in 2005. He was allowed to leave Iran only after being forced to sign an apology.

Hossein remained a passionate critic of (not only) Iranian politics and publicly broke yet another big taboo when he visited Israel, a country off limits to Iranians, in 2006 : ‘As a citizen journalist, I’m going to show my 20,000 daily Iranian readers what Israel really looks like and how people live there.’

In the fall of 2008 Hossein returned to Iran before completing his MA Global Media and Postnational Communication at SOAS in London and was arrested at his family’s home on 1 November 2008. It was not until late December 2008 that Iran confirmed that Hossein was in detention.

Today, one year after his arrest, official charges have yet to be laid, a trial date has yet to be set, and the conditions under which Hossein is being held remain uncertain.

Part 2 of this expose will look at the Blogfather’s controversial and turbulent career which has split the blogging community he has helped spawn right down the middle.

Part 3 of this expose will look at some of the controversies and conspiracy theories surrounding Hossein’s disappearance, highlight the Free Hoder campaign, and offer a platform to Hossein’s family, which has only very recently broken its public silence.

Stay tuned for more.

The London Film Festival has officially begun.  
My friend Aurora Tellenbach, PhD in Arab Cinema here at SOAS, was kind and diligent enough to put a very long list of the films from the region of Africa and the Middle East.  

The time that remains by Elia Suleiman, Palestine (France-Belgium-Italy)

London river by Rachid Bouchareb, Algeria-France

Behind the rainbow by JIhan El-Tahri, South Africa-France-Egypt

One-Zero by Kamla Abu Zekri, Egypt

Today’s special by David Kaplan, USA

The traveller by Ahmed Maher, Egypt

The night of counting the years by Shadi Abdel Salam, Egypt – a real classic, very intellectual on Egyptian heritage and responsibilities

Lebanon by Samuel Maoz, Israel

Ajami by Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani, Israel-Germany

Eyes wide open by Haim Tabakman, Israel

Defamation by Yoav Shamir, Israel –  a director highly critical of the politics of Israel 

Tell me who you are by Souleymane Cissé, Mali

Mugabe and the White African by Lucy Bailey, Andrew Thompson, UK

White material by Claire Denis, France

The absence by Mama Keita, France-Senegal

Fire of Mansaré by Mansour Sora Wade, Senegal

Have you hear from Johannesburg: The bottom line by Connie Field, USA

Power of the poor by Adama Drabo, Ladji Diakité, Mali

Women without men by Shirin Neshat, Iran

and my addition to the list is: The Exception and the Rule by Karen Mirza and Brad Butler, an experimental ethnography shot primarily in Karachi

Of course there are many more films, documentaries and education programs the are followed by talks and Q&A’s.  They are booking up fast, so if interested you can search any of these films at www.bfi.org.uk/lff where you can also find a full program.  

The festival ends on October 24.

   Abu Dhabi is a city that has been mentioned more frequently in the  ‘culture’ sections of international publications for the last two years because of its announced construction of Saadiyat Island.  This island is designed to become the ‘culture hub’ of the Gulf, if not the Middle East; it will be  home to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, a Guggenheim museum, performance art  centers, hotels, etc.

 The New York Times has written another update on the upcoming Louvre  Abu Dhabi, set to be opening in 2013.   (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/arts/design/27louv.html?th&emc=th) Here it is, yet another newly developing structure/ project/  initiative, that is based on an entirely European foundation.  In Abu Dhabi,  a new art museum is filling its spaces with pieces purchased and borrowed from the Louvre, a quintessentially Parisian museum, in all its branding, symbolism, controversy, and indeed culture, history, and simply art.   The pride Abu Dhabi oozes about acquiring pieces ranging from late 1800’s Manet to the post-Bauhaus colour blocks of Mondrian is a definitive sign of a continuous Eurocentricity in the Gulf’s developing ‘culture’, and now cultural industry. 

The problems with this are varied.  Abu Dhabi seems confident that it is worth their while that $555 million is spent for the name of the Louvre, plus a $56 million per year is spent on developing a “World” art collection, specifically from France and the United States, to “to help educate our people” (as Chairman for the Abu Dhabi Authority on Culture and Heritage put it).  But the price that is being paid here is not really that in the millions, but more the price of losing indigenous artistic inspiration as education for future creative’s in the region.

Having looked into other write-ups about the Louvre Abu Dhabi, it seems that this focus on Occidental art has been questioned by many.  In response, the president of the Louvre (Paris) replied that this will be a museum showcasing works from all over the world, and that the French Agence Musee, a team put together to direct the first stages of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, will ensure that there is a dialogue created between the Eastern and Western works.  So there you have it, the French team will ensure that there is Middle Eastern art in the Middle Eastern museum. 

I once went to a panel discussion on the progress of the art industry in the Middle East.  Panelists spoke about education, foundations, scholarship, and support through regional collections in the region itself.  I am glad to say that nobody suggested that a European art collection would do good in enhancing the art scene.  But unfortunately, when a Dubai gallerist, Sunny Rahbar, said that a new art industry model should grow organically and establishments within the industry should not imitate any known model from other parts of the world, a certain British gallery owner responded that there is only one model: the European one.  What’s worse is that he has been proven right by the ‘initiatives’ taken to develop this newly constructed cultural hub.  

CG of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, architected by Jean Nouvel

The 10th Palestinian Film Festival will by hosted by the Barbican Center and our very own SOAS. Starting from the 24th of April, running till the 8th of May there will be movies, talks, a photography exhibition, an evening of poetry and a plan for ongoing ‘mini-series’ screenings of short films.

The link for more information: http://www.palestinefilm.org/index.asp

SOAS screenings are free, while Barbican screenings require tickets – look for the ones with Q & A’s with the crew/cast. 

I wanted to share some reflections with those of you who attended or missed the one-day conference that took place in Brunei gallery today.

According to some of the presentations and talks given, there are two conflicting trends governing the performance of two major communication processes in the Arab world: satellite broadcasting and blogging. Broadcasting is moving towards transnational; cross-political-borders in terms of programming and targeted audiences, whereas blogging maintains national and excessively local foci (bounded by the imagined postcolonial political borders).

Such statements made me think about the paradigms we have been relying on @ SOAS Media and Film Center to think about blogging (in the global south) as a new and emerging communication mode/genre/activity … etc: The Habermasian public sphere and its extended baggage of critiques, and Gramscian hegemony (but particularly its contestation).

As I was over-thinking these two paradigms and their embedded concepts while listening to a group of 5 Arab bloggers and 2 blogger-wannabees; trying to pick up any similarities between their lingo and our diction, their frame of reference and our schemes of relevance, I failed to spot any linkages. No ‘subaltern(s)’ no ‘counter publics’, no ‘discursivity’, no ‘identity’, no ‘rationality, equality or clarity = publicness’. So I paused for a bit and thought, ‘could this be a theory vs. practice rupture?’

If there is a rupture, especially between these two paradigms and Arab blogging practices/trends I would like to reformulate it in the following question: ‘What happens after a post is blogged?’

Let me elaborate a bit here. I have been noticing, for a while now, an unjustified enthusiasm and fondness towards Arab & Arabic blogging by Western academic institutions accompanied with an aspiration for its potential to usher change and reform in the Arab world. But, I am personally developing the view that we are asking too much out of a mere novel mode of communication: simply, because change or reform requires political action and organization, whereas blogging (as a trend and a practice in the Arab world) contradicts these two.

I am worried that blogging has unleashed the Arab orality genie (excessive discoursing accompanied with minimal action) in a new form of “every one can speak out”. When orality in the form of techno-discursivity replaces political action and organization as the channels that assure democratic being, then we are not enjoying multi-publics but suffering from techno-ghettos. In other words, I am afraid that blogging has become the end rather than the means: when and where speaking out replaces voting or lobbying or working for structural changes.

Is it really too simplistic to assume that blogging in the Arab world is evolving into a channel where ‘bloggers’ release dissident feelings and don’t translate thought, ideas, and ideology into organized political – preferably parliamentary – actions and counter-action and therefore unintentionally create and prolong apathy – maybe it is!

Perhaps I have been a bit too harsh on the so-called Arab blogosphere, then again the performance that I witnessed today by a group of depoliticized bloggers (connecting political blogging to celebrity; and dismissing political actions) made me think twice not only about Arab blogging (as a mode of communication) but also about its practitioners as advocates for change!

Ghost by Kader Attia

Unveiled: New Art From The Middle East

Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Rd, London, SW3 4SQ

I visited this exhibition with fellow Global Media students Rounwah, Osama and Fazilet. I went with a completely open mind, intrigued as to what art from the Middle East actually looked like. I whole heartedly accept that it is not possible all the art that originates from the Middle East come under one label. Geographically, the Middle East is a diverse terrain and the same analogy can be applied to the art produced by Middle Eastern artists. So it would be redundant of me to use terms such as “Arabic”, “Islamic” or even “Middle East” to a certain extent.

Nevertheless, I entered the exhibition filled with trepidation. While touring the exhibition, I felt a mixture of emotions. Some art pieces I was able just to appreciate for the use of colours and shapes as they were visually stunning (very simplistic I know, but I am a self confessed newbie when it comes to the art world!) and the emotions invoked by the pieces. These pieces were done by artists Sara Rahber, Laleh Khorramian and Halim Al-Karim. However, there were some art installations which invoked a combination of surprise, anger, confusion and disbelief. One such installation was Kader Attia’s “Ghost” in which a group of Muslim women in prayer are depicted as having their bodies as vacant shells, empty hoods devoid of personhood or spirit. When I first saw this installation I was genuinely confused. I could not understand why the artist would want to depict women as empty when they are praying to God. I understand that the artist may wish to convey a message but I felt that this installation was distasteful, which ultimately led me to feel anger towards the art piece. However, after I had left the exhibition, I came to the realisation that the artist may not have meant to convey any message pertaining to the religious use of that position. The artist may have simply used this shape in order to convey a completely different message. Nevertheless, I would have to say that my first thought was that it was indeed trying to convey a message about Islam as Islam is what I immediately associate this position with.

To talk about the rest of the exhibition, I felt that the majority of the pieces did truly imbue “contemporary” as none of the pieces retain any classical designs or styles. As I have mentioned, some pieces were not to my liking, but then again this is “art”!

I have to mention the gallery itself, it seemed to be the perfect setting for these pieces to be “unveiled”!

I would recommend people to visit this exhibition and to go with open minds. If you are a complete novice to art from the Middle East, like myself, you will find the exhibition extremely interesting and thought-provoking.  I cannot speak on behalf of the people who have a more in depth knowledge of Middle Eastern art, but I still urge you as well to visit!

The Reluctant Fundamentalist
by Mohsin Hamid

I was just passing time in the Waterstones near SOAS when I saw this book. A subconscious compulsion made me reach for the novel and before I realised it, I had purchased it. Even though the title suggest the novel would contain some hard hitting material, I thought it would be a suitable read before bedtime, a novel from which I could read a chapter or two before falling asleep…how wrong was I!!!

I read the entire novel within 4 hours (this did mean it was 2 a.m. by the time I finished.)

To briefly summarise the plot, the novel is told in the first person from the viewpoint of “Changez”, the main protagonist. The novel begins in an outdoor cafe in Lahore, where Changez has befriended an American. To put the American at ease about his apparel, as Changez has a beard, Changez begins to recount his life to the stranger from overseas. He tells him how he graduated from Princeton and preceded to work in a New York firm specialising in ruthless appraisals of ailing companies being targeted for takeover. He admits at this point of his life he felt more akin with his American counterparts than Pakistanis, he even began a “relationship” with an American girl. Then the World Trade Centre attacks occur, plunging him into a crisis over his identity. He is prompted to question his religious and moral beliefs and this questioning leads him to leave his high flying career to return back to Lahore and then the narrative resumes to the present day and…I will not tell you anymore!

The monologue, which constitutes the novel, is a cleverly constructed fable of infatuation and disenchantment with America, tackles the issues of prejudice and misrepresentation very well.

However, I am slightly sceptical of the way the actual idea of fundamentalism is treated within the novel. It seems the author wishes to convey to the American and also the reader, who are being subjected to Changez monologue, that Changez “reluctantly” began to embrace the dark side of Islamic fundamentalism. I am not sure if this is a realistic representation of how a person educated in the “West” would conform, albeit reluctantly, to Islamic fundamentalism.  I cannot deny that, for Changez, there are certain elements in his life, such as his disillusionment with America when Afghanistan is invaded and how this affects neighbouring Pakistan (his home country), or the lack of understanding about the situation by his employers and how it affects him, which may turn him to the direction of fundamentalism. But it seems all too neatly executed in the novel for my liking.

Another weakness within the novel is the relationship between Changez and Erica. Personally, I feel that this relationship added nothing to the novel or the plot; it is superfluous in my mind. I gained no greater understanding of the protagonist Changez from his interaction with Erica. The novel did not warrant a “love story” to use the term extremely loosely. Instead, I feel it would have been more realistic to portray him as either celibate, uninterested in women or having casual relationships. The author’s treatment of Erica feels a little sketchy, psychologically: simultaneously over the top and undersubstantiated.

Throughout the novel, it is clear of the tensions between the American and Changez and the ambiguous nature of the ending allows the reader to draw their own conclusions. The reader is shown how Changez has reclaimed his patriotism for Pakistan and how this assertion makes the American uncomfortable.

Despite a few failings, nevertheless I found the novel utterly compelling. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a testament to its genuinely provocative nature, and it remains, at the very least, an intelligent, highly engaging piece of work. It is a multi-layered and thoroughly gripping book.