I selected this book on 10/25/15 from The Book Thing of Baltimore whose mission is to put unwanted books into the hands of those who want them. Thank you very much!

This is one of 125 books that I brought home from The Book Thing that day. I made that visit with a friend of mine from Catonsville, Maryland, and her cousin from New Hampshire. Needless to say, I came home with the largest haul! :)

This book had been on my wish list. Hurray!

I started reading this book today for the December 2015 TIOLI challenge on LibraryThing to read a book with the color blue on the cover or the word blue somewhere in the title.

This story takes place in Lahore, Pakistan. I would like to dedicate this copy of Hamid's book in memory of Warren Weinstein, an American contractor in Lahore, Pakistan, who was kidnapped by Al-Qaeda and subsequently accidentally killed by a January 14, 2015, U.S. counterterrorism drone strike. Warren Weinstein and his family were a local family to my own community. Learning of his death was heartbreaking news.

I previously read another book by Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and was quite impressed with it.

I thought this was a very intriguing debut novel. It brought the culture of the city of Lahore to the forefront during a time of economic depression. Daru Shezad loses his job at a bank and becomes more and more withdrawn as he descends into drug use and becomes increasingly aware of his lower socioeconomic status relative to that of his closest friends. Struggling to prevent his friends from knowing he has no income, he dabbled in drug sales and agreed to carry out a robbery.

The story is not a simple one because, at intervals, characters other than Daru tell about themselves, each in a blameless way. Daru's voice sounds very real and tells a sad story.

Happy reading!

I selected this book from the Little Free Library of Twinbrook (#7720) to travel elsewhere...

I'm releasing this book to my friend in Cabin John, Maryland. She liked reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist, also by the same author.

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