Mohsin Hamid, _The Reluctant Fundamentalist_

CHANGEZ, THE NARRATOR of Hamid's second novel (2007) has a bit of the Ancient Mariner in him, in that he plops himself down in from of a stranger in a Lahore restaurant and, without invitation, tells the story of his life. What is going on? Does Changez just have a need to narrate at unpredictable moments, as the Mariner does? Does the stranger (male, American, prosperous) for some reason need to hear Changez's story, as perhaps the Wedding Guest does? Although the American stranger never speaks in the novel, he occasionally seems as perturbed as the Wedding Guest ("I fear thee, ancient mariner!").

Changez, we learn, is a Pakistani who won a scholarship to Princeton. After a brilliant undergraduate career, he snagged one of the very few entry jobs in a powerful Wall Street firm, and he appears to be on the fast track to success there as well. He has a girlfriend, the brilliant beautiful (and American) Erica.

But shadows loom. Erica is still mourning the untimely death of her first boyfriend, who succumbed to cancer at a young age. Her mental health deteriorates, and she breaks off the relationship. When the planes hit the towers, Changez starts getting dirty looks on the street; he responds, to the bafflement of his colleagues, by growing a beard.

His work takes Changez to Chile, to evaluate the economic viability of a publishing house. One of the old hands there, Juan-Bautista, reveals to Changez (in a kind of John the Baptist, revealing of a vocation way) what he has become: a janissary. That is--like one of the European Christian boys recruited and raised by the Ottoman empire to serve in their powerful army, Changez is a Asian Muslim who has been recruited to do the West's (or Wall Street's) dirty work. He is well-paid, provided with comforts aplenty, but he has been turned into a weapon against his own people.

Changez quits his job and returns to Pakistan, where he...well, we don't know exactly. Does he become a jihadi? Is the American to whom he is speaking a CIA agent who has been sent to capture or kill him? Does Changez know the American is a CIA agent and is the long conversation setting up the capturing or killing of the agent?

I can't spoil things by revealing the answers to those questions because (spoiler alert, in a way) the novel never answers them; just when we think all will be revealed, bang, novel ends.

Liked the technique (not since the Marlowe of Lord Jim, I think, has a speaker held the floor for so long in what purports to be a single storytelling session), intrigued by the complex tangle of loyalties. Would have liked to have learned what Changez's actual relationship to the stranger is, but one can't have everything. Maybe I missed a clue and it's all my own fault.