Excellent. Absorbing. | Moth Smoke: A Novel

A Special Read Worth A Special Trip | Moth Smoke: A Novel | Mohsin Hamid

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	• Moth Smoke: A Novel Mohsin Hamid Picador, 2001 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 70 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

MOTH SMOKE by Mohsin Hamid

Hamid is an excellent writer. Sentences flow smoothly and the setting
is most interesting for an American reader. MOTH SMOKE AND THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST along with Durrani and Hosseini's work is essential to understanding a culture quite different from our own. This kind of understanding is essential if the West is to learn that "our" view of
the world is not necessarily the best one.

Excellent. Absorbing.

I like it a lot. I actually like it far better than the Reluctant Fundamentalist. The characterization is much better (flatter in the RF). The plot progression is sensitively drawn, almost too intense, as we follow Daru's deterioration into (SPOILER ALERT) addiction and crime. And add to that the powerful backdrop of the nuclear tests and you can really feel contemporary circumstances in the homeland. I recommend this book for people who think PACKistan is a morass of "trouble." It shows you the trouble up close, but it shows it to you close enough to understand.

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A Special Read Worth A Special Trip

This is the story of a young Pakistani accused of having an affair with his best friend's wife and killing a boy. In the background, however, are more important issues dangling, like Pakistan's devastating split with India, nuclear testing between the countries, the caste system and rampant poverty.
The prose reads like poetry, the story unfolding like a dream. I was so captivated that, when I accidentally returned my copy along with a bunch of library books, I felt devastated. I called the library as soon as it opened the next day and drove down especially to retrieve the treasure.

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A Political Parable About Modern Pakistan

There's no doubt about it: "Moth Smoke," by Mohsin Hamid, is an unforgettable reading experience. No matter what background you bring to this book, you'll come away entertained and enlightened...and don't be surprised if you feel a bit jet-lagged, as well. This novel immerses you in a fascinating cultural experience. For the duration of the book, you feel like you are living in modern Lahore, Pakistan.

The story is part love story, part satire, and wholly symbolic about the political state of modern Pakistan. The book is both a morality tale and a political parable.

At the start of the novel the protagonist, Daru, stands accused of murder. The structure of the novel forms a stylized trial. Daru tells us the story of the summer that lead up to his arrest. The summer begins when his bank executive boss fires him for a minor error of social class when dealing with a wealthy customer. Unable to get another job, Daru descends into drugs and crime. Along the way he falls in love with his best friend's wife and carries on a steamy affair with her. Alternating chapter-by-chapter with Daru's story, "witnesses" each take a chapter to talk directly to the reader to condemn or defend the accused, or to provide other relevant information. The book is filled with irony, parable, satire, humor, politics, morality, lust and longing. In the end, the reader is left to make up his mind concerning the guilt or innocence of the accused.

I was dumbfounded to learn that because the book centers on a trial, the author was successfully able to submit it as his J.D. thesis at Harvard Law School. Subsequently, it was picked up by a publisher and won widespread international literary acclaim as his debut novel. I must say I've rarely heard of another book with a stranger beginning!

What is most fascinating about this book for the Western reader, is its intricate and detailed portrayal of four levels of Pakistani culture: the ultra rich elite, the white-collar middle class, the blue-collar middle class, and the poor. The novel provides a culturally eye-opening literary adventure that makes you feel like your taking a journey through the seedy side of Lahore. The novel focuses on the decadent lifestyle of the ultra-rich--in particular, the Generation X children of the corrupt civil servants, politicians, government bureaucrats, and industrialists that form Pakistan's elite upper half-a-percentile.

The author knows this territory well. His father is a member of Pakistan's American-educated upper class. The author spent his early childhood living near Stanford University where his father was attending graduate school. Thus he learned to read and write English before he ever learned Urdu. After his father graduated, the family returned to Pakistan where Hamid spent his later childhood and adolescence. He returned to American for an undergraduate degree at Princeton and a law degree from Harvard. He worked for a few years as a management consultant in New York, and later as a freelance journalist. He now lives in London where he has dual Pakistani and U.K. citizenship.

"Moth Smoke" takes place in Lahore over the course of the long hot summer of 1998. This time period plays a key role in the thematic undercurrent of the novel. In May of 1998 India successfully tested five nuclear bombs, and in the summer of 1998, Pakistan responded with its first successful nuclear bomb tests. Naturally, the people of Pakistan were triumphant. Their jubilation forms the background for parts of this novel, and highlights its political themes.

The book begins and ends with a parable drawn directly from the glory days of South Asian prehistory, namely: the 17th-century Mogul Empire of Shah Jahan, the legendary Emperor who ruled over a vast Islamic empire including all of what is now India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, as well considerable territory from other bordering states. Shah Jahan is revered in Pakistan. He was born and raised in Lahore, but established many palaces, gardens, and mosques in other major cities including the Taj Mahal as a tomb for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. All the characters in "Moth Smoke" are named after actual historical people who played significant roles in the life of Emperor Shah Jahan.

"Moth Smoke" is a book that can be read, reread, analyzed, interpreted, and enjoyed on many levels. But the casual reader does not need to delve into its many layers, or know anything about Pakistan, in order to enjoy the book. The novel has a compelling story in its own right--if the truth be told, it's a literary page-turner.

For me, "Moth Smoke," has been one of the most fascinating books I've read in the past year, but I must add this caveat: I've just completely an academic course on Pakistani history and culture, and this novel played a significant role in helping me pull together all the complexity and abundant problems Pakistan has to deal with on its road toward establishing a stable democracy.

The book has much to recommend it: the prose is outstanding, the characters are wholly-real and unforgettable, the plot is darkly alluring, the structure is intriguing, and the ending leaves you with a great deal to ponder.

If you finish the book and are curious about the author's take on its political themes, I recommend you visit the author's website, navigate to "interviews" and read the interview he had in 2000 with "Newsweek" magazine concerning this novel.

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When Daru Shezad is fired from his banking job in Lahore, he begins a decline that plummets the length of this sharply drawn, subversive tale. Before long, he can't pay his bills, and he loses his toehold among Pakistan's cell-phone-toting elite. Daru descends into drugs and dissolution, and, for good measure, he falls in love with the wife of his childhood friend and rival, Ozi?the beautiful, restless Mumtaz.

Desperate to reverse his fortunes, Daru embarks on a career in crime, taking as his partner Murad Badshah, the notorious rickshaw driver, populist, and pirate. When a long-planned heist goes awry, Daru finds himself on trial for a murder he may or may not have committed. The uncertainty of his fate mirrors that of Pakistan itself, hyped on the prospect of becoming a nuclear player even as corruption drains its political will.

Fast-paced and unexpected, Moth Smoke portrays a contemporary Pakistan as far more vivid and disturbing than the exoticized images of South Asia familiar to most of the West. This debut novel establishes Mohsin Hamid as a writer of substance and imagination.

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