The novel makes ambiguity of motive its core dramatic engine

Evidence

At the eye of the storm are the three main characters, whose deliberations and motives tend to be rendered in more detail and are mixed and often contradictory. The wealthy liberal widow Claire Burwell is the 9/11 families’ representative on the judging panel. She begins as a trenchant supporter of Khan and his design but begins to have doubts as the architect digs his heels in and avoids answering his critics’ suspicions and the charges made against him. Mo Khan himself is a westernized, secular rising star of architecture who wins the contest but then refuses to explain the meaning and symbolism of his design or to withdraw it despite mounting opposition. At the other end of the social scale is Asma Anwar, wife of a Bangladeshi illegal immigrant killed in the Twin Towers who briefly becomes a cause célèbre when she shakes off the shackles of her gender to speak out on behalf of ordinary Muslims during a public inquiry into Khan’s design. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 276

Categorization

• XREF: Morey’s focus on mixed and contradictory deliberation as the thing rendered ‘in more detail’ is exactly the close-reading lens for Home Boy and The Reluctant Fundamentalist — where ambiguity of motive rather than villainy drives the tension. — connects to: The novel’s twin poles are ungeneralizable psychology or abstract thesis — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 75; The disillusionment novel’s inward turn replaces adventure with the risk of solipsism; Exposing characters’ motives dissolved tragedy’s sacred awe and birthed citizen theater — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 315
• DEFINE: A key craft distinction: complicating a Muslim character’s motives (Khan refusing to explain, Asma’s mixed public emergence) is how a novel contests flat Islamophobic caricature — vs. merely affirming he’s ‘one of the good ones.’