Discontent and its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York, and London

Description

From the bestselling author of How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, and Exit West, coming in March 2017, “a near-perfect essay collection, filled with insight, compassion, and intellect.” (NPR)

In both his internationally bestselling fiction and his wide-ranging journalism, Mohsin Hamid has earned a reputation as a “master critic of the modern global condition” (Foreign Policy). A “water lily” who has called three countries on three continents his home (Pakistan, the birthplace to which he returned as a young father; the United States, where he spent his childhood and young adulthood; and Britain, where he married and became a citizen), he has achieved a truly
panoramic perspective on the clash of forces – political, economic, religious, cultural – that have transfigured the face of contemporary life and shaken the old certainties about how to navigate it.

In Discontent and Its Civilizations, Hamid traces the fracture lines generated by a decade and a half of seismic change, from the “war on terror” to the struggles of individuals to maintain humanity in the rigid face of ideology, or the indifferent face of globalization. Whether he is discussing courtship rituals or pop culture, drones or the rhythms of daily life in an extended family compound, he transports us beyond the alarmist headlines of an anxious West and a volatile East and helps to bring a dazzling diverse world within emotional and intellectual reach.

Reviews

“Hamid is an amazingly gifted writer, and Discontent and Its Civilizations is a near-perfect essay collection, filled with insight, compassion, and intellect. It’s a powerful look at the way people juggle their individuality with the tensions that inevitably result from being part of a community.” —NPR

“Often compelling … Its strongest entries reflect the same subtleties of thought [as his novels], laid down in his lapidary, crystalline prose. … The chapters about Mr. Hamid’s own life and his meditations on Pakistan’s tumultuous recent history … command attention — and call out for a volume of their own.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Powered by innate wisdom and informed opinion … solid, questioning, explorative writing that not only picks fault and apportions blame but also offers tentative solutions. … The Hamid that emerges is a probing, critical political animal, one that is resistant to foreign intervention in Pakistan, anxious for more pluralism and tolerance within its borders, prepared to find good in the ‘brutal phenomenon’ that is globalization, and mystified—rightly—by ‘illusory’ civilizations.” —Daily Beast

“Hamid is a deft and fluid novelist, unafraid to take on big topics…[In] Discontent and Its Civilizations …[he] make[s] a case for the way big issues unfold across individual lives. And yet his intent is not to trace the evolution of the war on terror but how it alters us on the most intimate terms.” —LA Times  

“Elegant, piercing [and] often funny.” —The Chicago Tribune

“The author of three groundbreaking novels…[Hamid] compels readers to see the global need for empathy as well as the need to acknowledge that we are all hybrid beings. And it is this blended approach—personal essays bolstered by research…that makes Hamid’s argument so successful…[T]his book is essential…important and urgent.” —The Brooklyn Rail

“Whether the essays are brief, evocative op-eds or longer essays on literature and Pakistan’s history, they are always concerned, at their core, with the rippling impact of globalization …offering perspectives…that are little heard in the West… No matter where we live, Hamid’s insights are a testament to our shared responsibility and humanity.” —Biographile

“The author of the buzzed-about novel How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia applies his global perspective to illuminating essays.” —O Magazine

Author Biography

Mohsin Hamid is the author of the international bestsellers Exit West and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, both finalists for the Man Booker Prize. His first novel, Moth Smoke, won the Betty Trask Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award. His essays, a number of them collected as Discontent and Its Civilizations, have appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. He lives in Lahore, Pakistan.