Attributing political dissent to personal love motives dampens its political charge

Evidence

It works with Changez’s admission, almost on the last page, of another potential motive for his high-profile dissidence: “Later, it occurred to me that in addition to expressing my dismay, I was possibly trying to attract attention to myself; I had, in my own manner, issued a firefly’s glow bright enough to transcend the boundaries of continents and civilizations. If Erica was watching … she might have seen me and been moved to correspond” (182). The brief reappearance of the unsatisfactory love plot here suggests mixed motives. It takes the story off in the same direction one finds in writers such as Rushdie, where political or religious feelings are seen as implausible as drivers for action, but love and loss are universal motives. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 469

Categorization

• XREF: Gives the reader a diagnostic: in Rushdie-inflected fiction, private love motives displace political ones — a pattern to test against both Hamid and Naqvi.