'I'm very comfortable as a hybridized mongrel': wisdom from the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

• Author: Pal, Amitabh
• Position: Interview

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I'VE BEEN WAITING TO INTERVIEW writer Mohsin Hamid since 2007. That year, he came out with his second novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which got my attention. Ever since then, I've been wanting to do a feature article for The Progressive in order to introduce him to you. In 2008, I tracked down his e-mail address from a Pakistani-American author, and Hamid and I have intermittently been in touch about figuring out the appropriate time to meet.

After all these years, the right moment finally came this March. Hamid was on tour for his new book, and fortuitously made a visit to Milwaukee to promote it. I drove over from Madison, and we met in the lobby of Milwaukee's Pfister Hotel. Hamid answered my questions good-naturedly and gave me all the time I needed, even though he had an event scheduled soon after at the Boswell bookstore. Mohsin Hamid proved to be as impressive in person as he is in his writing.

Hamid has lived a global life. He was born in Pakistan, but spent much of his childhood in California while his dad was earning a Ph.D. at Stanford. He relocated with his family to Pakistan when not quite a teenager and came again to the United States to attend Princeton and then Harvard Law School. He subsequently spent a few years in England (he has dual British and Pakistani citizenship) before deciding in 2009 to shift back to Pakistan.

It is these multiple worlds that have provided Hamid such fertile material.

His debut work, Moth Smoke, got rave reviews when it was published in 2000. The story of the downward spiral of a Pakistani banker, the book was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Fiction and was chosen by The New York Times as a notable book.

But it was his second novel that brought Hamid into the limelight. The Reluctant Fundamentalist tells its tale in the form of a monologue by a Pakistani to an unnamed American at a cafe in Lahore. The protagonist, Changez, wryly narrates his history and explains why he became disillusioned with the United States post-September 11. The novel was short-listed for the Booker and was translated into dozens of languages.

Hamid excavated his own past for the book. Changez's life echoes Hamid's in that both worked for a while for Corporate America and both left the country after staying here for a few years. Unlike Changez, Hamid was in London, though, when the September 11 attacks happened.

"I was in a gym at that time, and I remember hearing that the planes had...