How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia Review
How to Get Filthy Rich in Ascent Asia (Hamid)
How to Get Filthy Rich in Ascension Asia
Mohsin Hamid, 2013
Penguin Group Us
240 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594632334
Summary
From the all-time-selling author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Ascent Asia tells the story of an anonymous man's journeying from impoverished rural boy to tycoon in an unnamed gimmicky metropolis in "rise Asia," and of his pursuit of the nameless "pretty daughter" whose path continually crosses merely never quite converges with his.
Stealing its shape from the self-help books devoured by ambitious youths all over "rise Asia," the novel is genre-bending and playful but also reflective and profound in its portrayal of the thirst for ambition and dear in a time of shattering economic and social upheaval. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rise Asia, Mohsin Hamid's tertiary novel, confirms that this radically inventive storyteller is among the nearly important of today's international writers. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Nativity—1971
• Where—Lahore, Islamic republic of pakistan
• Education—A.B., Princeton Univer.; J.D., Harvard Univer.
• Awards—Betty Trask Award; South Banking concern Prove Award
• Currently—lives in London, England, UK
Although he was built-in and raised in Lahore, Islamic republic of pakistan, award-winning novelist Mohsin Hamid spent part of his childhood in California while his begetter attended grad school at Stanford. Returning to the U.S. to complete his own educational activity, Hamid graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Police force School. He worked for a while every bit a direction consultant in New York, and then moved to London, where he continues to work and write.
Hamid fabricated his literary debut in 2000 with Moth Smoke, a noir-inflected story about a young banker living on the fringes of Lahore order who plummets into an underworld of drugs and offense when he is fired from his chore. Providing a rare glimpse into the complexities of the Pakistani class system, the book was called "a brisk, absorbing novel" (New York Times Book Review), "a hip folio-turner" (Los Angeles Times), and "a first novel of remarkable wit, poise, profundity, and strangeness" (Esquire). Moth Smoke received a Betty Trask Honour and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
In 2007, Hamid added luster to his reputation with The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Written every bit a single, sustained monolog, this "elegant and chilling fiddling novel" (New York Times) is an electrifying psychological thriller that puts a dazzling new spin on culture, success, and loyalty in the postal service-ix/11 world. The book became an international bestseller; information technology was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Decibel Laurels, and the Republic Writers Prize, and went on to win the S Banking company Testify Award for Literature.
2013 saw the publication of How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia to both public and disquisitional acclaim. The New York Fourth dimension's Michiko Kakutani called it "securely moving," writing that How to Get Filthy Rich in Rise Asia "reaffirms [Hamid's] identify as one of his generation's most inventive and gifted writers."
There is no question that Hamid's unusual life feel, a cantankerous-cultural stew of influences and perspectives, has informed his fiction. In addition to consulting and writing novels, he remains a much-in-need freelance journalist, contributing articles and op-ed pieces — often with a Pakistani slant — to publications like Time magazine, The Guardian, New York Times, Independent, and Washington Post. He holds dual citizenship in the U.1000. and Pakistan.
Extras
From a 2007 Barnes & Noble interview:
• When I was 3 years quondam I spoke no English, only fluent Urdu. Nosotros moved from Pakistan to America for a few years. I got lost in the lawn because all the townhouses were identical. I was knocking on the door of the townhouse next to ours by mistake, and some kids gathered effectually, making fun of me. For a month after that I didn't say a word. When I started speaking once more, it was entirely, and fluently, in English language.
• I once woke upwards in Pakistan and found a bullet in the bonnet of my automobile. Someone had fired it into the air, probably to celebrate a wedding, and it had striking on the style down. That incident set up in move an entire line of the plot of my first novel, Moth Smoke. Without it, the protagonist would not have been an orphan.
• My wife was born iv houses from the house in which I had been built-in in Lahore, Pakistan. Just we met for the start time by chance in a bar in London, thirty-two years afterwards. It'south a minor world.
•When asked what book most influenced his career as a writer, here is his response:
Toni Morrison's Jazz. Non because it is her best book, nor because it is my favorite book, but because it was the get-go book of hers I read and also the book I was reading when she read me. I wrote the starting time draft of my first novel, Moth Fume, for a artistic writing course with her in my final semester at Princeton. When she read my words aloud I understood something about writing, almost the power of orality, of cadence and rhythm and the spoken word, that unlocked my ain potential for finding voices and shaped everything I have written since. This book opened a door that I walked through without ever, in xiv years, looking dorsum.
(Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)
Volume Reviews
It is a measure out of Mr. Hamid'due south adventurous talents that he manages to make his protagonist'south story work on so many levels. "You" is, at in one case, a modern-day Horatio Alger grapheme, representing the desires and frustrations of millions in rising Asia; a bildungsroman hero, by turns knavish and recognizably human, who sallies forth from the provinces to find his destiny; and a nameless but intimately known soul, whose bittersweet romance with the pretty girl possesses a remarkable emotional ability. With How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia Mr. Hamid reaffirms his place as one of his generation's most inventive and gifted writers.
New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
Brilliant… In its cleverness, its slightly cruel satire and its complex understanding of both Western and Eastern paradigms, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is pure Hamid… His storytelling style is both timeless and contemporary, a postmodern Scheherazade… This novel is smart about many things, including medicine and the processes of death, only is smartest of all virtually literature itself.
Marion Winik - Newsday
[E]xtraordinarily clever…Hamid…has taken the about American form of literature—the cocky-help book—and transformed it to tell the story of an ambitious man in the Third Earth. It's a bizarre amalgam that looks similar a parody of the genre from one angle and a melancholy reflection on modernistic life from some other…Working inside the frame of a self-assistance book would seem constricting at best, annoying at worst, only Hamid tells a surprisingly moving story…His protagonist is never named, indeed, in that location aren't any named people or places in this novel…Only the story manages to be both particular and broad at the same time.
Ron Charles - Washington Mail
Hamid is equally much an inventive stylist every bit he is a gifted storyteller… As a event, his novels are compulsively readable, and "Rising Asia" is no exception… Tremendously profound and entertaining.
Alex Gilvarry - Boston Globe
Astounding… An aggressive, moving story near love and loneliness [that] constantly surprises… by reinventing itself just as characters reinvent themselves… At the heart of the book is [the] consideration of what it means to succeed, to rise or to assistance oneself. How does one live and die? …The questions simmer below the surface of this tremendous, wise and surprisingly moral book.
San Francisco Chronicle
Thank you to Hamid's meticulous use of item—and his sympathy for a human on the brand in a society of endemic poverty—we appoint securely with a serious character whose essence remains his own yet who stands every bit a effigy representative of his fourth dimension and place, an issue but the best novelists can create… This tale of an unscrupulous striver may bring to mind a globalized version of The Great Gatsby. Given the unabashed gimmickry of Hamid's how-to blueprint, it's a pleasant surprise to find that his book is nearly that good.
Alan Cheuse - NPR
A love story and bildungsroman disguised as a self-aid volume, and the result has all the inventiveness, exuberance and pathos that the author'southward fans take come to wait… Marvelous and moving.
Time
Wonderfully severe… Hamid is a sly witness to a traditional culture'southward dizzying trajectory—supermodels stalk metropolis billboards; a drone hovers ominously in the sky—but his satiric impulse gives way to compassion for the intimacies that keep us tethered in a rapidly irresolute earth.
Vogue
This is one of those original works that are likewise resonant as a record of human experience and geo-political shift, and a strong argument for Hamid as one of the well-nigh important writers working today. An enjoyable read no matter who 'y'all' are.
Daily Animal
Mohsin Hamid's hotly anticipated new book tells the story of young honey between capitalism and the latest target of its cupid'southward arrow: Asia… Political, romantic, heady, and a page-turner throughout.
Harper's Bazaar
Ambition rules in this playful tertiary novel from PEN/Hemingway Honor finalist Hamid (The Reluctant Fundamentalist). The novel follows the unnamed narrator'south journey from his village childhood to becoming a corporate superstar in the large urban center. The novel is told in the 2d person, the narrator ushering us through a life in an unidentified developing Asian country while elucidating the many weather condition that must be met to become filthy rich. The hero seems to be on the right track; still, he must navigate the usual obstacles in life that could hinder the way to his final goal: family illness, bad luck, and most dangerously, dearest. The protagonist is simply a teenager when he meets his platonic adult female, merely this pretty girl's life has a similar arc every bit the hero's. Though readers may find it frustrating that they never overlap for long, the intermittent intersections provide them an anchor to the lives they left in agony. The volume takes its formal cues from the cocky-assistance genre, just the adopting of that form's unceasing optimism too nullifies any sense of depth or struggle. Fortunately, Hamid offers a subtle and rich look at the social realities of developing countries, including corruption, poverty, and how economic development affects daily life from meridian to bottom. Agent: Jay Mandel, William Morris Endeavor. (Mar.)
Publishers Weekly
The title could come from i of those get-rich-quick books, and in fact Hamid imaginatively uses that genre's format to shape his narrative. Simply this is very much a novel, past the writer of the Betty Trask Honour-winning Moth Fume and the best-selling, Homo Booker-brusk-listed The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Here, the nameless protagonist goes from rags to riches as he builds a corporate empire based on that increasingly deficient commodity, h2o. He also crosses paths repeatedly and passionately with a pretty young woman on the ascension. Hamid always manages to nail the realities of the culturally seismic postal service-9/11 world.
Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. Why exercise you call up the writer chose to write this novel not only in the second person but also in the form of a self–help book? What effect did these choices take on your experience as a reader?
2. How does the transition from rural to urban life affect the family? What challenges does it alleviate for them, both individually and as a unit, and what new challenges does it create?
3. What get-go intrigues the hero about the pretty daughter? In what means does her rise parallel—and diverge from—his? Were you surprised past the course of their affair? Why do yous call back the author chose to give it this form rather than arts and crafts a more conventional romance? What does the book ultimately have to say about honey?
iv. What happens to morality—for the hero, his father, and the pretty girl—in the pursuit of ambition? What happens to love?
5. Apart from continents, no identify is named in the book and all of the characters are anonymous. Why do you recollect the author chose to forgo names? What effect does this anonymity have on the telling of the story and on your experience reading it?
half dozen. The story spans the hero's entire life, from early childhood to death. How does the author convey such a broad sweep of time in so few pages? What insights virtually mortality does the story offer?
7. The book is ready against a backdrop of massive and often brutal economical and social modify. In what ways does this context limit the hero's life choices? In what ways does it liberate him? What might this story expect similar played out elsewhere in the world?
8. At one bespeak the hero becomes affiliated with a group of "idealists," and at other points his begetter'south faith and his wife'south religious–minded activism are discussed. What practice yous recollect the novelist'southward attitude toward religion is?
9. In Chapter 9, "Patronize the Artists of War," the role of "information" and its less–than–benign uses emerges, and the tenor of the narrative shifts as well. How would you depict this shift, and how are these 2 developments related?
10. After finishing the book, what do y'all call back of the title? In what sense does the novel ultimately offer "cocky–aid"? How does it blur the boundaries between genres—fiction, nonfiction, self–help, and even sci–fi?
eleven. What did you remember of the ending of the book? Was it surprising, given the title? Satisfying? Where did it get out yous every bit a reader, and where do you think the writer intended it to get out you?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
Source: https://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/fiction/9176-how-to-get-filthy-rich-in-rising-asia-hamid?showall=1
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