The Truth Will Out: Mohsin Hamid Speaks His Name in <i>The Reluctant Fundamentalist</i>

<p class="first" id="d57943e72">The debate on Mohsin Hamid's <i>The Reluctant Fundamentalist</i> has, over the years, built what Stanley Fish calls an “interpretive community” which dictates how a work should be read and discussed. The quite tedious yet all-pervading claim that Hamid, in his novels, concerns himself with globalization, economy, neoliberalism, politics, multiculturalism, identity, and whatnot is today <i>so</i> fashionably common among Hamid critics that it feels like this is all what Hamid's literature has to offer. This article engages in a critical discussion with Hamid's <i>The Reluctant Fundamentalist</i> and its critics and suggests a new alternative to reading the novel and, by implication, Hamid's other novels. It argues that a significant aspect of <i>The Reluctant Fundamentalist</i> has been left undiscussed: art. Hamid's text, I submit, not only reflects on its own footprints, which makes it metafictional, but also revolves around Hamid's own artistic pursuits, experiences, and intimacies which, I suggest, are represented through Erica, herself a novelist in the story, whom Hamid artistically uses to speak his name. </p>