Mohsin Hamid and the transnational novel of globalization

Wilson, J. M. (2017) Mohsin Hamid and the transnational novel of globalization. In: Acheson, J. (ed.) The Contemporary British Novel since 2000. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 177-187.

The files below are currently restricted to repository staff only.

They may be awaiting processing or under a publisher's embargo.

Items under embargo will be available for download from the date noted.

Item Type:	Book Section
Abstract:	Mohsin Hamid’s three novels, all written since the year 2000, have established him as a rising star of the transnational novel of globalization, featuring prominently in what Bruce King calls ‘the current golden age of writing by Muslims’. All are forms of the Bildungsroman and play out their individual dramas with respect to present-day Pakistan’s relationship with the West. They can be read alongside the work of contemporaries such as Hanif Kureishi, Kamila Shamsie, and Kirwan Desai, who in showing the human consequences of East-West polarization, give space and voice to the Muslim subject. In each novel Hamid challenges the interpretative powers of his audience by questioning pre-determined reading positions; and through a literary poetics which draws on the proliferating collectivities and networks of globalization, in his third novel he hints at a widening arc of international sympathy and understanding.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Moshin Hamid, transnational, globalisation, Pakistan, postmillenial fiction
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PS American literature > PS700 Individual authors > PS3550 1961-2000
Creators:	Wilson, Janet M
Editors:	Acheson, James
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Faculties, Divisions and Institutes:	Faculties > Faculty of Education & Humanities > English and Creative Writing Research Centres > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > Faculty of Education & Humanities > English and Creative Writing University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > Research Centre > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
Date:	16 February 2017
Date Type:	Publication
Page Range:	pp. 177-187
Title of Book:	The Contemporary British Novel since 2000
Place of Publication:	Edinburgh
Number of Pages:	224
Language:	English
ISBN:	9781474403726
Media of Output:	Print
Status:	Published / Disseminated
Refereed:	No
Related URLs:	Publisher
References:	‘Losing Paradise Now’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 52.2 (February 2016). Margaret Scanlan, ‘Migrating from Terror’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 46.3 (2010), 266-78 (267). In the post-postmodern period, witnessing the un-sayability of the Event and the ultimate impossibility of interpretation gives way to performative modes; see A. Kelly, ‘Moments of decision in Contemporary American Fiction: Roth, Auster, Eugenides’, Critique, 5 (2010), 313-332. See Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (New York: Verso, 2004), p. 8; cited by Tim Gauthier in 9/11 Fiction, Empathy, and Otherness (New York and London: Lexington Books, 2015), p. 6. Mohsin Hamid, Moth Smoke (2000; rpt. Harmondsworth Penguin, 2011), p. 232. All quotations are from this edition; hereafter, page numbers will appear in the text, preceded by MS. Muneeza Shamsie, ‘Pakistani English Novels in the New Millennium: Migration, Geopolitics, and Tribal Tales’, in New Soundings in Postcolonial Writing: Critical and Creative Contours. Essays in Honour of Bruce King, ed. Janet Wilson and Chris Ringrose (Leiden: Brill & Rodopi, 2016), pp. 149-67 (159). Cf. Laura Marcus, Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice (Manchester and New York Manchester University Press, 1994), p. 276. Kathleen Wall, ‘The Remains of the Day and Its Challenges to Theories of Unreliable Narration’, The Journal of Narrative Technique, 24.1 (1994),18-42 (21-22). The greater cultural authority of this hidden story is suggested by the fact that Mumtaz’ pseudonym, Zulfikar Manto, is a code name for the famous Urdu writer, Sa’ada Hasan Manto. See Shamsie, ‘Pakistani English Novels in the New Millennium’, p. 158. See ‘Moshin Hamid in Conversation with Yamina Yaquin’, Wasifiri, 23.2 (June 2008), 44-49 (45). Peter Morey, ‘The Rules of the Game have Changed: Mohsin Hamid and Post 9/11 Fiction’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 47.2 (2011), 135-46. Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2007), p. 19. All quotations are from this edition; hereafter, page numbers will appear in the text, preceded by RF. Delphine Munos, ‘Possessed by whiteness: Interracial affiliations and racial melancholia in Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing 48.4 (2012): 396-405 (397). Cf. Slavoj Zizek: ‘…this fantasmatic screen image entered our reality. It is not that reality entered an image; the image entered and shattered our reality’, in Welcome to the Desert of the Real (London and New York: Verso, 2002), p. 16 See Gauthier, 9/11 Fiction, Empathy, and Otherness, p. 1. See Peter Childs, Claire Colebrook and Sebastian Groes, ‘The Need for Real “Truth”’, in Women’s Fiction and Post-9/11 Contexts, ed. Peter Childs, Claire Colebrook and Sebastian Groes (New York/London: Lexington Books, 2015), p. xvi. See Mohsin Hamid, Discontent and its Civilisations: Despatches from Lahore (New York and London: Penguin, 2014), p. 26. He reports his sister saying of New York, ’Now I hear how scared my Pakistani friends are, the abuse they’re getting, I’m glad I’m not there’. See Muneeza Shamsie,‘Covert Operations in Pakistani Fiction’, Commonwealth Essays and Studies, 31.2 (2009), 20-21. Roger Bromley, Narratives for a New Belonging: Diasporic Cultural Fictions (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), p. 122. See Caren Irr, Toward the Geopolitical Novel: US Fiction in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), p. 60. Morey, ‘The Rules of the Game have Changed’, p. 138, alluding to Deluze and Guattari, argues for a deterritorialization of Pakistani fiction in order to explore what lies beyond ‘the totalising categories of East and West’. In connection with this, see Gauthier, 9/11 Fiction, Empathy, and Otherness, p. 1. Theo Tait, ‘Review of How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia’, The Guardian, 28 March 2013. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (London; Hamish Hamilton, 2013), p. 99. All quotations are from this edition; hereafter, page numbers will be given in the text, preceded by HGF. Bruce King, ‘The Image of the American state in Three Pakistani Novels’, in Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 8: 3-4 (2007), 683-88 (685); Morey ‘The Rules of the Game Have Changed’, p. 139. Comparisons were inevitably made when the 2013 remake of The Great Gatsby was released in the same week as Mira Nair’s film adaption of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Christopher Young, ‘Freedom of Speech, the Second Person and “Homeland”: A Conversation between Jay McInerney and Mohsin Hamid’, New York Daily News, 24 October 2013; Andrew Anthony, ‘Review of How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia’, The Guardian, 21 April 2013 Parul Sehgal, ‘Yes Man, Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia’. New York Times, 29 March 2013. Tait, ‘Review of How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia’.
URI:	http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/id/eprint/10048

Actions (login required)

Edit Item

Altmetric