A celebrated global novel can critique empire while remaining a global commodity.

Evidence

Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist takes its place as one such diasporic English-language text that has reaped the rewards of its position as a successful global commodity. It was shortlisted for Britain’s most prestigious literary award, the Man Booker Prize, in the year of its publication; has received numerous other plaudits; has been translated into more than twenty languages across the world; and was made into a successful Hollywood movie. Therefore, both novel and author could be said to be beneficiaries of the globalized book market. Yet what is noticeable is that the text inscribes an unease about the status of writing as part of its broader recognition of the imperialist agenda of a war on terror pursued by economic and ideological as well as political and military means. Near the end, the protagonist, Changez, notes his dawning recognition “that finance was a primary means by which the American empire exercised its power.” — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 443

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s hinge work with Hamid’s novel as evidence — the tension between commercial success and critical content is core to reading it as contesting vs. reinforcing.
• SEED: Angle: the commercial fate of ‘critique novels’ as itself evidence of the market’s absorptive power — for the Hamid section of the planned piece.