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Moth Smoke: A Novel
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$15.00
$6.00*
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| Part No: | 0312273231 |
| Manufacturer: | Picador |
| MFG Part: | |
| Customer Rating: | 4.5 / 5.0 |
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- ISBN13: 9780312273231
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Through a brilliant array of voices and perspectives, debut author Mohsin Hamid tells the story of one love-struck Daru Shezad, who when fired from his banking job, instantly removes himself from the ranks of Pakistan's cell-phone-toting elite and plunges into a life of drugs and crime.But when a heist goes awry, Daru finds himself on trial for a murder he may not have committed. His uncertain fate mirrors that of Pakistan itself, animated by nuclear weapons and sapped by corruption.AUTHORBIO: Mohsin Hamid grew up in Lahore, Pakistan, and attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School.His work has appeared in The New York Times.He currently lives in New York City.
Since the late 1970s, India in all her infinite variety has been brought to life as a posse of Indian authors writing in English have exploded onto the scene: Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Anita Desai, Rohinton Mistry, Vikram Seth, Bharati Mukherjee--the list is legion. But what of Pakistan--that Siamese twin, painfully separated in the partition of 1947? Though neither as numerous nor as well known as their Indian counterparts, Pakistani writers are beginning to make an impression on Western readers. Novelists from Rushdie to the Pakistani Bapsi Sidwha have written about the partition and the bloody civil war that followed; even stories set in modern-day Bombay or Lahore cannot escape the aftershocks of the division. On the surface, Mohsin Hamid's first novel, Moth Smoke, seems more domestic than political drama: narrated from several different perspectives, it tells the story of Daru Shezad's ill-fated affair with his best friend's wife, Mumtaz. But in a country like Pakistan, the personal and the political are difficult to separate, and as the story moves along, the divisions between gender, class, and opportunity provide a not-so-subtle commentary on the fissures that run through contemporary Pakistani society. The novel begins, tellingly, with a historical fragment about the internecine wars of succession that followed the rule of Emperor Shah Jahan (builder of the Taj Mahal): Imprisoned in his fort at Agra, staring at the Taj he had built, an aged Shah Jahan received as a gift from his youngest son the head of his eldest. Perhaps he doubted, then, the memory that his boys had once played together, far from his supervision and years ago, in Lahore. Jump ahead several hundred years to Lahore in the summer of 1998. Childhood playmates Daru and Ozi have just reunited again after Ozi's three-year stay in America. Glad as he is to see his old friend, Daru can't keep his eyes off of Ozi's wife, Mumtaz. "You know you're in trouble when you can't meet a woman's eye," he says. But woman trouble isn't his only problem; he's also addicted to hash, which leads to his dismissal from an upscale job as a banker. Soon Daru spirals out of control into a degraded existence on the fringes of society. Then a young boy is killed in a hit-and-run accident, and he is accused and jailed. Shah Jehan would probably recognize this age-old story of love and revenge playing out once more--this time against the backdrop of the Indian-Pakistani arms race. Hamid artfully weaves the subcontinent's tragic history into his characters' no-less-tragic present, rendering Moth Smoke a novel that resonates on many levels. --Sheila Bright
| Cynically naive, or naively cynical . . . Welcome to Pakistan | 2010-07-29 | 5 / 5 |
| | A slippery slope into cultural and moral relativity. Lahore is a typical big city in a developing country, with a few very wealthy people and lots of very poor people. Mothsmoke is a well-written story of the people betwixt and between, on their way down or up. The story is told in several different voices, narrating the downward slide of the protagonist. A glimpse at a particular slice of contemporary Pakistan, worth a read. |
| Literature | 2010-07-28 | 5 / 5 |
| The book begins and ends with excerpts from the story of Emperor Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal for his beautiful and beloved wife, Mumtaz. Their children, Darashukoh and Aurangzeb, became enemies. Mohsin Hamid names his characters for these historical people and shows a similar unraveling of childhood relationships.
Was it determined from the start that Dara Shukoh and his friend Aurangzeb, known as Ozi, would become rivals? As young competitors Dara was smarter and stronger, but his wealthy friend Ozi was empowered to succeed by family money and connections. Ozi was able to get a US education, became a lawyer and then help his father preserve and expand the family fortune.
Set in Pakistan as it becomes nuclear in 1998, Dara's attitude towards his bank's customers gets him fired from the low level job he got through Ozi's family's contacts. Without an MBA, a US degree, or a well connected relative, doors for legitimate employment are not available to him. He sees the entitled life of Ozi's elite friends. He allows his life to spin out of control and he becomes like a moth to a flame.
Through Dara's story, Hamid draws a portrait of the young in LaHore. He shows how corruption (in Ozi's case money laundering) trickled fortunes upward to the elite and sent the have nots into a downward spiral. Both Ozi and Dara show emotions ranging from lack of concern to contempt for those below them on the social ladder. It is not surprising that Mumtaz, who is the only one who shows concern for right and wrong, can love neither man. The characters reveal themselves in their first person accounts, but none of the characters truly understands the other.
This is an excellent piece of literature, as is Hamid's newer novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Hopefully Hamid will not keep readers waiting for 8 years for another.
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| | Really good writing. Allegorical, desperate, sad, erotic. An unusual, very fine piece of fiction. |
| Moth Smoke | 2009-11-12 | 4 / 5 |
| | Daru, our protagonist, is permanently unhappy; disconnected from his feelings, his friends, his life. Perhaps this is due to the death of his mother by a stray celebratory bullet when Daru was young. Daru drifts in and out of modern elite society in Lahore, Pakistan in the late 1990's. (The book was published in 2000.) It turns out that modern elite society in Lahore is a lot like modern elite society in, let's say, Los Angeles. The elite, many educated in American colleges, drive Hummers to and from their gated communities through the dirt and past the poverty. They party with alcohol, booze and dope while they hit on each other's wives. Pot and ecstasy are the drugs of choice. Daru drifts and lets himself get pulled into the underworld of drug-dealing and organized crime. He seems to be an observer as he watches his own life dissipate like the puff of smoke when a moth is drawn to a candle flame (the title). The book's true value is in its local color of modern Pakistan and the glimpse of that society we share with the drug-dealing Daru as he drifts along the interface of the elite and the poverty-stricken. |
| An easy read | 2008-12-28 | 3 / 5 |
| | I read this after reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist which I loved. Moth Smoke was easier to read in that it raises less troubling issues than that book did; after all, sex and drugs are things we've been reading about for years. In this book they come through the form of Daru, educated but without the wealth and connections that would allow him to easily penetrate the world of Pakistan's elite. The author, Hamid, manages to draw you into a world in which someone is only on the fringes and who also seems to lack real ambition for that world. In that sense it can be also read as a fish out of water story but with dire consequences as Daru loses his job, enters into an affair with his best friend's wife, and sinks further and further into drug dependency, finally turning to a life of crime. There's little redeeming here--you won't walk away feeling good about the world. I also never felt the author explored what drove these people--he presents them rather one-dimensionally and they're all shallow shadows of each other. But Hamid's writing is fluid and envelops the reader and the book is a great way to while away a day reading. |
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