For Episode 4 of Book Chat, we travel back just a decade or so, to Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist and David Szalay's short stories in a novel, All That Man Is.
We discuss Mohsin Hamid's ability to condense big ideas - what makes a fundamentalist? What biases are you bringing to the story? - into readable prose (and his other magical novels like Exit West) and David Szalay's attempt to condense modern masculinity from teen to OAP, as it roves Europe - in one book.
You can get in touch bookchatpod@gmail.com
Sound by Joel Grove and production by Pandora Sykes
Books/articles mentioned:
All That Man Is and London and the South-East by David Szalay
The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Exit West and The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid
Games and Rituals and Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis
If on a winter’s night a traveller by Italo Calvino
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
The Runaways by Fatima Bhutto
‘All That Man Is’, by David Szalay, review by Christopher Tayler for the Financial Times – https://www.ft.com/content/fe2db1c4-f797-11e5-803c-d27c7117d132
'All That Man Is,' and a Lot He Is Not, in David Szalay's View, by Dwight Garner for The New York Times – https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/books/review-all-that-man-is-and-a-lot-he-is-not-in-david-szalays-view.html
I Pledge Allegiance, by Karen Olsson for The New York Times – https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/books/review/Olsson.t.html
Clip attributions:
David Szalay on Radio 4 Bookclub, 2019
Mohsin Hamid on Radio 4 Bookclub, 2011
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Our books for Ep 5:
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Memorial by Bryan Washington
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