Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsSlick Writing, But Not The Complete Package
Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2013
Mohsin Hamid's "How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia" will keep you spellbound with it's prose, but the lack of emotional depth or development in the characters render this short novel a bit of a one trick pony. The trick however is good enough to show up and see what this pony is all about.
Told as a second person narrative, "How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia" (hereafter "HTGFRIRA"), is about the rise and fall of a unnamed boy who moves to an unnamed slum of a city in poverty and ends up one of it's wealthiest denizens. Along the way he will fall in love, start a business, get married, and guide his business up the wheel of fortune and watch as it falls back into the muck.
Hamid's book is grounded in enough of present day Third World problems that it feels real and important. All the issues in deregulated Third World states - lack of environmental protection, fraud, corruption, exploitation of workers, vulnerability to organized crime - all come into play here. And because "HTGFRIRA" is so light and unencumbered by plotting or characters, reviewers or well-educated readers can easily turn it into a tool in their next debate. Like a shiny bowl to be filled with rhetoric. The setting the story takes place in, a world of endless urban sprawl, no environmental regulations, and sub-standard products should be familiar to anyone that has spent time off the beaten path in the sub first world.
The nameless hero dodges and weaves his way to the top of the Third World totem pole by cunningly taking advantage of or skirting all the issues I mentioned before. He is a huckster. Selling water, the most essential of all commodities, that he boils to proper safety standards (sometimes) in his basement. He uses a gang to protect himself from violent rivals. He negotiates the asinine bureaucratic rules of the government. The unnamed country (seems like India to me) is as much a character as our protagonist, a place where the drive for growth has outstripped rules and decency, where only the cunning and immoral can advance (a place best shown in journalism in the New Yorker article "Boss Rail" by Evan Osnos from October 2012). Throughout Hamid's prose shines with clever turns of phrases, metaphors, use of imagery continually raising my eeybrows.
Brief aside: I would recommend reading this book without the dust jacket. I was approached in the mall while reading it by a woman who thought that it was an ACTUAL self-help book; IE that I actually was reading a book that would teach me how to get filthy rich in rising Asia. She clearly wanted to verbally go at it, as it took some persuading to convince her that it was a novel rather than a tool for me to learn how to exploit and get rich off Asians. She proceeded to say something about Asia which may have been profound but I forgot and something about leadership; how Chris Christie is a true leader because he can physically intimidate people (while saying this she started bumping up against me). Top 5 most bizarre experience I've ever had at a Best Buy Mobile
This book, which I enjoyed a lot, is a little like a Maserati - it's great at going fast, but you couldn't bring your daughter to soccer practice, go on a roadtrip, or get groceries with it. I judge books on prose (writing style, symbolism, use of metaphors, etc), the characters, the plot, and the overlying themes and literary significance (I would probably rate the importance as 30, 30, 30 and 10 percent of my overall grade, respectively). What is missing from "HTGFRIRA" is the drive and motivation of the protagonist. He wants to make a bunch of money, wants his business to succeed. Not sure why....which makes sense, because the protagonist is you! "HTGFRIRA" is undone by the same gimmick which makes it great. The lack of character development and motivation condemns the "HTGFRIRA" to fancy sports car status. Might not be the best car in the world, but it sure can fly, though.
