It parodies a get-rich-quick book and gestures to a new direction for the novel, all in prose so pure and purposeful it passes straight into the bloodstream. It’s a love story and a study of seismic social change. (You’re also nine steps from ruin, but we’ll address that in a minute.) The marriage of these two curiously compatible genres - self-help and the old-fashioned bildungsroman - is just one of the pleasures of Mohsin Hamid’s shrewd and slippery new novel, a rags-to-riches story that works on a head-splitting number of levels. You’ll live and what’s more, you’re only seven steps from getting Filthy Rich, according to the narrator. The only remedy at hand is a large white radish, which your mother cooks up in a foul brew.Ĭourage. Once you quit cowering, you’ll be the hero of this novel written in the second person, although there’s nothing remotely heroic about you at the moment you’re so sick you can scarcely speak. The astonishing and riveting tale of a mans journey from impoverished rural boy to corporate tycoon, How to Get Filthy Rich in Asia steals its shape from the business self-help books devoured by youths all over rising Asia. “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia” begins under a bed. Parul Sehgal, New York Times Book Review, March 29, 2014
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |