"We Just Value": Narration and Financial Valuation in Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Abstract

© 2023 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System akistani novelist Mohsin Hamid is no stranger to the elite pools from which US investment banks and management consulting firms draw their entrylevel analysts.1 After studying creative writing at Princeton under Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates, Hamid earned a law degree at Harvard and joined McKinsey & Company, the leading consulting firm. Although Hamid “had his pick of investmentbanking job offers when he graduated in 1996. He picked McKinsey instead, attracted by the more creative atmosphere” (Thomas, Jr.). While working at the firm, Hamid published his wellreceived debut novel Moth Smoke (2000), which centers on a midlevel banker in Lahore caught in a downward spiral. However, it was Hamid’s second novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) that catapulted him into global fame. An international commercial and critical success, the novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and adapted, somewhat unfaithfully, into a feature film.2 The novel is narrated by Changez, a Princetoneducated Pakistani valuation analyst who abandons his career in the US, returns to Lahore as a university lecturer in finance, and becomes an antiimperialist activist. The novel’s frame narration