How Filthy Rich Rising Asia
I'm admittedly an Indophile-I love books dealing with everything with the subcontinent. I tried the case the of exploding mangoes and I gave up on Pakistani writers. I saw this book at my local library-I've seen and ignored the Reluctant Fundamentalist-and I decided to give 'these guys' another try. Thank God I'm so gullible (or bored). This is probably the best book I've read in ages. Hamid writes powerfully-on more than one occasion, I've had to turn back to the cover to reread the Author's, decidedly Muslim name. Mohsin Hamid.No, not Hemmingway or JD Salinger or the likes. He's able to distill the essence of Asia (predominantly Pakistan, but could easily have been any part of the Indian subcontinent)and let it fill your veins. On more than one occasion, I've kept the book down, overwhelmed, swept into the strong currents of culture and country he brings back. What more can I say about this book, a book that I have been carefully rationing and unfortunately, or fortunately on this scotch soaked evening, I have finished. a beautiful tribute to a land and culture, born so different from what it is now.
I look forward to this brilliant writer's next book and I wish I could take him out for a dinner and scotch.
a wonderful book.
10 stars out of 5.
This story is such a good read. The author uses his keen sense of humor and irony to get at the motivations for many of the people in this world who strive for power to control their own lives -- and how they (we) can go awry. The story was very entertaining, and at the same time I felt I learned about general human tendencies at the same time as I learned about the specific cultural norms in a totally different society (though maybe not so different as I'd originally thought).
BalasHapusThe author of "How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" styles the novel as a sort of self-help book of how to succeed in modern Asia as related by an undescribed third person narrator. It is a clever conceit.
BalasHapusThe book has twelve chapters each laying out a guideline for success in business in modern Asia very similar to those guidelines available in any number of actual nonfiction business books geared to developing the next set of great entrepreneurs and blue-chip businessmen (and women.) The guidelines include "Get an Education," "Don't Fall in Love," "Avoid Idealists," "Work for Yourself," and similar others. The proud and confident protagonist of this book--an unnamed "you"--follows these guidelines to what one can call a successful business career.
Whether the successful business career also equates to a successful life is another question and that may be the essential theme of this book. Readers will have to judge for themselves how the protagonist, and the narrator, evaluate the life of the protagonist as he leaves his hardscrabble rural environment as a young man and makes his business career in the big city.
Learning the rules to being a business success as he goes along, he leaves his village and family behind, has an irregular, long-term, mostly distant relationship with a young model, sees his parents die, gets married and has a son, and maneuvers deftly through the poverty, crime, bizarre bureaucracy, and transformative economy of the (unnamed) Asian nation feeling its way in a global evolution.
Very much like "The White Tiger," by Aravind Adiga, Mr. Hamid describes the rich and complex textures of life in such an interesting, frustrating, and dynamic nation-the contrasts of rich and poor and city and country; the struggle to modernize; the range of personal strategies to survive (corruption, crime, deceit, entrepreneurship etc.); and the complex interplay of the survival instinct, ego, community, family, love, and meaning.
Amidst all of this texture and dynamism, there is opportunity for personal initiative and creativity. The twelve guides to success represent true principles of survival and advancement in rising Asia and in other similar primitive and capitalist environments. Yet, as the protagonist ages, suffers business and physical declines, both the protagonist and narrator seem to have doubts about their ultimate values.
There seems to be a hint of Herbert Marcuse's view of the dark side of business (capitalist) success here. The last chapter, called "Have an Exit Strategy" is especially moving, not merely because the protagonist and narrator become reflective and self-conscious, but because the reader will.
(FTC disclosure (16 CFR Part 255)): The reviewer has accepted a reviewer's copy of this book which is his to keep. He intends to provide an honest, independent, and fair evaluation of the book in all circumstances.)
A moving evocation by an author who loves his nameless protagonist...a kind of Everyman in a volcanically changing nameless Asian megapolis. Unusual as written in the second person...you are addressed...you are there...and you come to care very very much about this life/love story.
BalasHapusThis book is disguised as a self help book and parts of it will make you cry and others laugh out loud. It is universal although set in a country modeled on Pakistan. Life can be ruled by chance with does of hard or good luck, determination and considered choices. I finished this book in a gulp. The writer is brilliant and can distill the human condition in a sentence. Read this!
BalasHapushamid is an author to cherish. he is a true writer; every word counts and satisfies. his story builds steadily. every character is necessary. it doesn't matter that the beautiful girl has no name; she is a fully developed character. it doesn't matter that the country is unnamed. it grows from mostly agricultural to mostly high tech. it has an underlying tension...youthful tribes, bribe-seeking officials. the ending is perfect.
BalasHapusI'm admittedly an Indophile-I love books dealing with everything with the subcontinent. I tried the case the of exploding mangoes and I gave up on Pakistani writers. I saw this book at my local library-I've seen and ignored the Reluctant Fundamentalist-and I decided to give 'these guys' another try. Thank God I'm so gullible (or bored). This is probably the best book I've read in ages. Hamid writes powerfully-on more than one occasion, I've had to turn back to the cover to reread the Author's, decidedly Muslim name. Mohsin Hamid.No, not Hemmingway or JD Salinger or the likes. He's able to distill the essence of Asia (predominantly Pakistan, but could easily have been any part of the Indian subcontinent)and let it fill your veins. On more than one occasion, I've kept the book down, overwhelmed, swept into the strong currents of culture and country he brings back. What more can I say about this book, a book that I have been carefully rationing and unfortunately, or fortunately on this scotch soaked evening, I have finished. a beautiful tribute to a land and culture, born so different from what it is now.
BalasHapusI look forward to this brilliant writer's next book and I wish I could take him out for a dinner and scotch.
a wonderful book.
10 stars out of 5.
We never really know who is telling this story. It could be person from the past or the present. Perhaps it is some sort of omniscient voice. Sometimes the observations aren't so wise. But the voice took me in right away.
BalasHapusHamid's book is structured as a self help book addressing the unnamed protagonist working his way from grinding poverty to become filthy rich. The term filthy rich is not an accidental idiom; it encompasses all the actions that had been required to reach wealthy status for a man born with lack of estate, power, or pedigree. This narrator is the second character and his insight into the pain and regrets of the protagonist constitute the unknown fate and future of his efforts. This voice is wry and sometimes nostalgic. The narrator is a perverse Jiminy Cricket bearing the practical side of a conscience i n a world too poor to accomodate one.
Meanwhile, Hamid has managed to transform the now ritual story of the boy rising from the Indian slums to monetary success. He has escaped the hackneyed plot. In adding the narrator speaking in second person, he allows his characher to pause mentally from some of the "filthier" parts of his wealth while still pursuing whatever he needs to do. The point that Indian success depends on a totally different set of rules from some other countries is acknowledged, but in the end is slyly seen to be identical to the stories of any acquired wealth. Sometimes I longed to yell over the narrator and dissuade him from one course or another, but this is the fate of a book. To complete the quote in the title, each reader constructs his own book just as each sperm creates its own universe in its successful pursuit of the egg.
This book will pursue you and lie in wait for you in the crannies of wisdom dispersed with the plot. I wasn't attracted by the title, but read it due to Amazon editor picks, and I have to say that this was completely merited. It is another story pitched to your mind in its making of its own version of this book.
BalasHapus