He had begun to see himself as a “servant of American empire” and it was unbearable for him. This land is the enemy of his homeland and he doesn’t stay there any longer.

However, he soon understood that his doubtful success and social position in America mean nothing to him. He never thought he could get a prestigious job and have a name, because America was not his country, and he didn’t like it. He came alone to a new country and is doing his best to become the best. (Jan.A young Pakistani boy, an alumnus of Princeton University, is struggling for happiness. Hamid's tale, played out against the background of Pakistan's recent testing of a nuclear device, creates a powerful image of an insecure society toying with its own dissolution. One in particular comes vividly to life: Murad Badshah, a sort of Pakastani Falstaff, officially the head of a rickshaw company, but kept afloat by drug dealing and robbery. Daru's noirish, first-person account of his moral descent, culminating with murder, interweaves with chapters written in the distinctive voices of the other characters.

But as Daru becomes more dependent on drugs, the arrogance he himself has absorbed from his upper-class upbringing stands out in stark contrast to his circumstances. Daru decides then that Ozi is morally bankrupt. But their affair really begins after Daru witnesses Ozi, driving recklessly, mow down a teenage boy and flee the scene. Mumtaz is fascinated by Daru's air of suppressed violence, and Daru is intrigued by Mumtaz's secret career as an investigative journalist the two share a taste for recreational drugs, sex and sports. From the moment they meet, Daru and Mumtaz are drawn to each other. As the story begins, Ozi has just returned from America, where he earned a college degree, with his wife, Mumtaz, and child. Daru owes both the job and his education to his best friend Ozi's father, Khurram, a corrupt former official of one of the Pakistan regimes who has looked out for Daru ever since Daru's father, an old army buddy of Khurram's, died in the early '70s. Hamid subjects contemporary Pakistan to fierce scrutiny in his first novel, tracing the downward spiral of Darashikoh ''Daru'' Shezad, a young man whose uneasy status on the fringes of the Lahore elite is imperiled when he is fired from his job at a bank.

The reluctant fundamentalist sparknotes