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Moth Smoke
Mohsin Hamid. Picador USA: 2001 (paperback). ISBN: 0312273231. 256 pages.
Guide not available
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If you don't like to read stories about young people getting in all sorts of
trouble--the sex, drugs, and violence kind--then you should skip this one altogether. If you don't like to read stories
that feature less-than-lovable characters, pass over this description and move on to more sympathetic pastures. If you do
like stories that celebrate the East as an exotic, sensual, dreamy realm of magic, you're still out of luck. Hamid's vivid
portrait of life in contemporary Pakistan owes little to the standard mystical myth of Eastern culture. His hero, Daru,
gets fired from his job at a bank, sulks over his failure to keep up with the Land Cruiser and cell-phone set, mistreats
his servant, falls in love with his best friend's wife, and gets hooked on heroin. Oh, and we first meet Daru in court, on
trial for the murder of a young boy. Now before you say thanks but no thanks, please be aware that this is a truly
captivating, genuinely unprecedented beast of a first novel. We loved it. Few of us will be lucky enough to read a novel
quite so unique, or quite so unnerving, in the near future.
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