The Last White Man
The New York Times Bestseller 2022
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
From the twice Booker-shortlisted author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West, a story of love, loss, and rediscovery in a time of unsettling change
One morning, Anders wakes to find that his skin has turned dark, his reflection a stranger to him. At first he tells only Oona, an old friend, newly a lover.
Soon, reports of similar occurrences surface across the land. Some see in the transformations the long-dreaded overturning of an established order, to be resisted to a bitter end. In many, like Anders's father and Oona's mother, a sense of profound loss wars with profound love.
As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different shading: a chance to see one another, face to face, anew.
'A transformative tale . . . compellingly readable and strangely musical' Guardian
'With this big-hearted novel of ideas, Mohsin Hamid confronts challenging truths with insight, wisdom, and - above all else - limitless compassion' Tayari Jones, An American Marriage
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On the first page of Hamid's underwhelming latest (after Exit West), a white man named Anders wakes up to find he has mysteriously "turned a deep and undeniable brown." From this Kafkaesque beginning, Hamid spins a timely if unsatisfying racial allegory in which, one after another, the white inhabitants of an unnamed country become dark-skinned. Hamid mutes the power by harnessing his plot to the dishwater-dull Anders, who works at a gym, and his equally bland girlfriend, Oona, a yoga instructor. The lack of social context is also puzzling, with the story set in an unspecified time and place largely stripped of historical and cultural detail. Hamid employs a cool, spare prose style with little dialogue, leaving the reader to feel like the action of the novel is taking place behind a wall of soundproof glass. The glass briefly shatters when white militants come for Anders, though the author quickly turns back the threat. Later, when Oona's mother, who indulges in right-wing conspiracy theories, is sickened by the sight of her white daughter in bed with dark-skinned Anders, Hamid taps the rich potential of his premise. For the most part, though, this remains stubbornly inert.
