Articles and Interviews

Mohsin Hamid describes his first novel as a more literary version of a Choose Your Own Adventure book. With a seductive array of voices telling different versions of the same story, the critically acclaimed Moth Smoke left it to the reader to judge each character's guilt or innocence, in a tale of drugs, adultery and classism in Lahore, Pakistan. Now that Hamid, 32, is working on his second book, expectations are high. Eager to hear about the still-untitled work-in-progress, TONY called Hamid at his flat in London, one of his three home bases, along with New York and Lahore.

Time Out New York: Your first book was set almost entirely in Pakistan, but you've spent a lot of the past decade in the U.S. How will the new novel reflect that?

Mohsin Hamid: It's the story of a young Muslim guy working in New York in the current environment and trying to figure out whether this is a place where he can stay and live and thrive, or whether he should go back to where he came from.

TONY: What's been your experience of "the current environment"?

MH: Lots of my friends have left America to move back to Pakistan—liberal people, the least religiously militant people you can meet on the planet. But they just felt so uncomfortable in the States that they've been leaving.

TONY: Have you or your Pakistani friends felt uncomfortable because of racism or xenophobia?

MH: The feeling [used to be] it didn't matter where you come from—as long as you basically believed in American values, America was home to you. And I think lately, for a lot of Muslims, it's begun not to feel that way. Lots of people who would otherwise have stayed will find themselves frightened and eventually leave. But the overall trend is toward America being more liberal and more accepting. So I'm just kind of waiting it out. I don't think America is going to become what the rest of the world is scared of—this militaristic, reactionary, conservative country—but it might take a little while for America to find its path again.

TONY: How does being South Asian in New York affect your writing?

MH: In many ways, New York for me was an introduction to a much broader South Asia. In Lahore, I knew Lahore. But in New York, I got to meet people from all over South Asia. I would say that New York to me feels like the capital of the South Asian diaspora and, in a certain sense, the capital of South Asia. Given that South Asian countries have been so hostile to each other, much of our mixing has had to happen outside of South Asia.