大象传媒

Paul Bhattacharjee reads Mohsin Hamid's keenly awaited follow-up to his bestselling The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a groundbreaking novel on modern Asia, which follows one boy's rise from impoverished villager to corporate tycoon.

The book steals its shape from the business self-help books devoured by youths all over 'rising Asia', and follows its nameless hero to the sprawling metropolis where he begins to amass an empire built on the most fluid and increasingly scarce of goods: water. Yet his heart remains set on something else, on the pretty girl whose star rises alongside his, their paths crossing and re-crossing in a love affair sparked and snuffed out again by the forces that careen their fates along.

In today's episode: the move to the city, and seizing an education.

Mohsin Hamid is the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Moth Smoke. His fiction has been adapted for the cinema, translated into over 30 languages, received numerous awards, and been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Born and mostly raised in Lahore, he spent part of his childhood in California, studied at Princeton University and Harvard Law School, and has since lived between Lahore, London and New York.

Producer: Justine Willett
Reader: Paul Bhattacharjee
Abridger: Sally Marmion.