I read The Reluctant Fundamentalist many months ago. I wasn't sure whether I liked it or not. I liked the ambiguous ending, and I liked the meeting in Mexico? was it? which finally pushed him off his career. The disaffection I did feel came across all right: in my opinion/experience, it doesn't take that much, actually, to be disaffected with a place/culture, especially if you've unrealistic expectations of it.

But I didn't think Hamid handled the fundamentalism all that well. Perhaps I'm mistaken in my belief that disaffection and fundamentalism are very far apart on the same scale; for me to understand the protagonist's impulse to active- and violent- opposition instead of passive disaffection would have required greater passion from him. A passionate man who did not intend to oppose another culture, but finds himself doing so, I can sympathise- even empathise- with, a man without passion to fuel his opposition, who defines himself as 'fundamentalist', I can not. My problem was that he wasn't a fundamentalist; he was playing at being one. Or so I thought. That's always the risk, with trying to describe an extreme emotion or faith or action in the language of reasoned argument and logic; the two are essentially, mutually exclusive. At some point, there has to be a breakdown of the latter in order for the former to be affected. I thought Hamid tried to affect an extremism without it, and I thought it didn't work.

Not sure if I explained myself properly! I'd like to read Spiral Road at some point anyway. It sounds like quite a read.