Synopsis:

"Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard. I am a lover of America..."
So speaks the mysterious stranger at a lahore cafe as dusk settles. Invited to join him for tea, you learn his name and what led this speaker of immaculate English to seek you out. For he is more worldly than yo might expect; better travelled and better educated. He knows the West better than you do. And as he tells you his story, of how both betrayed him, so the night darkens. Then the true reason for your meeting becomes abundantly clear...

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Posted off to cinnycat who was one of the winners of my birthday RABCK draw.

thanks so much for this RABCK! This was on my wishlist. I will write another journal entry when I'm done reading. Hope you had a wonderful birthday!

The writer shared a lot of things with the main character: a hometown of Lahore Pakistan, went to Princeton, worked in America. With a book like this with so many similarities between a main character and the author, you wonder how autobiographical it is. Changez explains why he is a "reluctant fundamentalist" while dining with a man he has just met in his hometown of Lahore, Pakistan after 9/11. It didn't seem to me like Changez "changed" at all (when first hearing the name I thought they started speaking French). He seemed consistent with his feelings towards America, they were just buried in his new-found Americanism, working for a firm that was paying him really well. You want to find out why Changez thinks he changed and how far he really went. After going back and reading the first page, I wonder how much he was lying. It's confusing to read a book about someone who grinned when they saw the World Trade Center fall on TV on 9/11 because "America was brought to her knees". He didn't think about the human beings perishing but was concerned for employees losing their jobs when he was evaluating the worth of a company, months after 9/11. If you care about the job, why wouldn't you care about the life? Changez supposedly thinks he changes after 9/11 because Americans were scared and defensive after 9/11. Of course they would be. For a lot of Americans, 9/11 was a bizarre wake-up call. And if Changez, who adopts America as much as he does, will grin on 9/11, I think people should be worried. This was the only thing that put me off Changez as a person. This book leaves a lot of questions. I didn't see the point of Erica and how she influenced Changez's story, something seemed a bit off (it is a short book after all) but possibly he made Erica up entirely to make himself more sympathetic to his listener? Just as he was lying about being a "lover of America." He can't be, if he was that happy that America was attacked. The point of the book is to say that America loves bringing violence to other countries, and I don't mind that opinion at all, but I don't know how many Americans would be grinning at seeing buildings fall with people in it, no matter WHAT country the building is in. At least I know that not every person in the world is anti-American, just as not every American is against the rest of the world.

*****Possible spoilers above and definitely below*****
I just read that Erica is supposed to be America (hmm.. that would explain the name anyway..I don't know how it could have been more obvious) but I completely didn't see it. And thinking about it, I don't see it, but I'll continue to think about it. I wish I had known that when I read it the first time though.

Sent this one to classicreader25... enjoy!

Looks intriguing. Thanks cinnycat!