06/06/2022
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. Agent: Jay Mandel, WME. (Aug.)
Praise for The Last White Man:
“A fantastical exploration of race and privilege. . . . In an age aflame with strident tweets, Hamid offers swelling remorse and expansive empathy. Such a story could only be written by an author who is entirely candid about his awkward journey along the racial spectrum. . . . It anticipates that sweet day — not forever deferred, surely — when we finally close the casket on the whole horrific construct of racial hierarchies and see each other for what we are.” —The Washington Post
“Fantastical treatments of race have long served to underscore just how absurd it is that this social construct should wield so much power. Hamid’s novel follows in this legacy, challenging readers to consider the ways in which something as superficial as the color of one’s skin holds sway in their lives.” —TIME
“A moral fable for our entire harrowing world. . . . exquisitely evoked by Hamid in a mesmerizing, serpentine style. . . .The Last White Man offers its own small ray of light.” —Los Angeles Times
“Searing, exhilarating. . . . reimagines Kafka’s iconic The Metamorphosis for our racially charged era. … Hamid brings a restless, relentless brilliance to his characters’ journeys and the revelations, public and private, that inform us all. … Gorgeously crafted, morally authoritative, The Last White Man concludes on a note of hope, a door jarred open just enough to let transcendence pour through.” —Oprah Daily
“It is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that this book is entirely about race. Yet what grips the reader throughout are the relationships that shift and turn, each according to the capacity not to tolerate but to see another human being fully, and to meet them exactly where they are….What is miraculous, truly miraculous, Hamid shows us, is that anyone permits love.” —The Boston Globe
“The story thrives on the tension that occurs between the contrast of the new self against the old one within the same individual. . . . a compelling illustration of the damages wrought by confusing biology with ideology.” —Chicago Review of Books
“Hamid’s likely readers already know race is a 'construct' that we could do nicely without. . . . But whether deliberately or not — and Hamid’s too smart a writer not to know what he’s doing — The Last White Man has an additional agenda: to destabilize not just our toxic imaginings but our conventional notions of fiction itself.” —New York Times Book Review
“[A] tale of poignant magical realism. . . . Haunting and arresting in equal measure.” —Elle
“A fever dream of a story. . . . Well worth the ride.” —Associated Press
“At its heart, this is a novel about seeing, being seen, loss and letting go. . . . In the hands of such a deft and humane writer as Hamid, a bizarre construct is moved far beyond any mere ‘what if’ . . . . Making strange what we find familiar, he reminds us of our capacity to break beyond our limited visions of each other.” —Guardian
“The great staging of Hamid’s work is intimacy; the grooves of human attachment his sole preoccupation. He is among the foremost diviners of partnership: of friendships, lifetime loves, and shattered marriages. Of how love is crystalized, of everything love can hold, what it can and will withstand across time. He understands—and in return makes us understand—our cavernous need for another, that somewhere bone-deep we cannot make it alone.” —WIRED
“[Hamid’s] surreal narratives are just-the-other-side-of-plausible because they're tethered to once-improbable realities…[he] writes with on-the-ground immediacy that draws readers in." —NPR Fresh Air
“A moving fable.” —GQ
“Beautiful. . . . There are people I love right now who are in a lot of pain these days. And nothing I’ve read gave me more access to them, or felt like it did, than this book.” —Ezra Klein
“An effective allegory on race and racism in America. . . . Thoughtful writers like Hamid are essential.” —Star Tribune
"What does hatred of the other become, this haunting story asks, when we ourselves become the other?” —Tampa Bay Times
“A Kafka-centric allegory on racism and the loss of white privilege. . . . The Last White Man begs the question of how deep the well of empathy and unity runs, making this an engaging read book-lovers don't want to miss.” —PopSugar
“An emotionally gut-punching exploration of race, privilege, grief, and white anxiety.” —Mother Jones
“A frighteningly timely allegory about welcome forms of progress and the fears of people unable or unwilling to grow.” – Shelf Awareness (starred review)
“A brilliantly realized allegory of racial transformation. . . . Hamid’s story is poignant and pointed, speaking to a more equitable future in which widespread change, though confusing and dislocating in the moment, can serve to erase the divisions of old as they fade away with the passing years. A provocative tale that raises questions of racial and social justice at every turn.” —Kirkus (starred review)
“Hamid. . . reminds us yet again that fiction sometimes provides the most direct path to truth.” —BookPage (starred review)
“Concise, powerful. . . . Hamid imaginatively takes on timely, universal topics, including identity, grief, community, family, race, and what it means to live through sudden and often violent change.” —Booklist
“With this big-hearted novel of ideas, Mohsin Hamid confronts challenging truths with insight, wisdom, and —above all else— limitless compassion.” —Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage
“With one remarkable book after another, Mohsin Hamid has proven himself to be one of the 21st century's most essential writers. This is, perhaps, his most remarkable work yet. THE LAST WHITE MAN is myth and poetry operating as a deeper form of social commentary, and an extraordinary vision of human possibility.” —Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies
Praise for Mohsin Hamid:
“Hamid’s enticing strategy is to foreground the humanity. . . . [He] exploits fiction’s capacity to elicit empathy and identification to imagine a better world.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Lyrical and urgent . . . peels away the dross of bigotry to expose the beauty of our common humanity.” —O, the Oprah Magazine
“Moving, audacious, and indelibly human.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Feels immediately canonical, so firm and unerring is Hamid’s understanding of our time and its most pressing questions.” —The New Yorker
★ 07/01/2022
Hamid's latest is yet another imaginative pivot for the formally adventurous author, revisiting the magical realist texture of Exit West but with a more overtly parable quality. This short novel features Anders, who wakes up one day to find that his skin has suddenly turned dark. In the aftermath of this surreal upset to his life, he reconnects with old friend Oona, and they embark on a new relationship as the world around them continues to change. Occupying a liminal space recalling Kafka's The Metamorphosis or José Saramago's Blindness, but with the more relaxed feel of a fairy tale, the narrative proves to be both markedly intelligent and surprisingly empathetic. In taking on the inherently dehumanizing effects of race on the individual and showing how so many must unmake or unknow their identities as their skin darkens—and thus evolve toward a more loving humanity as they see the world anew—Hamid bespeaks compassion rather than anger or malignant consequence, eschewing grand worldbuilding for a deeply intimate and remarkably gentle tale. A certain slightness to the text keeps it from reaching the brilliant heights of Exit West, but Hamid maximizes his spartan framework emotionally and discursively, delivering a novel that lingers and expands long after its final, delicate pages. VERDICT A provocative and welcomingly unpredictable work, taking readers to deeply humane places and through moving considerations that similar works rarely visit.—Luke Gorham
Author/narrator Mohsin Hamid’s voice is pleasing and clear. His restrained narration works well for this audiobook. The plot device is straightforward: A white man named Anders wakes one morning with brown skin. Hamid’s uninflected voice lets this Kafkaesque story unfold without melodrama. When Anders’s transformation is repeated by more and more people—even his pale lover, Ooma—they become unrecognized objects of prejudice. The community reacts with outrage: Violence comes from a racist group called “pale-skinned militants." This allegorical fiction is invigorated by Anders’s and Ooma’s close relationship with each other and their families. The novel is both a reflection and a warning. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Author/narrator Mohsin Hamid’s voice is pleasing and clear. His restrained narration works well for this audiobook. The plot device is straightforward: A white man named Anders wakes one morning with brown skin. Hamid’s uninflected voice lets this Kafkaesque story unfold without melodrama. When Anders’s transformation is repeated by more and more people—even his pale lover, Ooma—they become unrecognized objects of prejudice. The community reacts with outrage: Violence comes from a racist group called “pale-skinned militants." This allegorical fiction is invigorated by Anders’s and Ooma’s close relationship with each other and their families. The novel is both a reflection and a warning. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
★ 2022-05-11
A brilliantly realized allegory of racial transformation.
Hamid’s latest opens with a scenario worthy of Kafka: A young man named Anders awakens “to find he [has] turned a deep and undeniable brown.” Faced with the shock of this metamorphosis, he punches the mirror that reveals the stranger who is he. He then calls in sick, at which his boss growls, “You don’t work, you don’t get paid.” Meanwhile, his old girlfriend, Oona, returns to the unnamed town—perhaps somewhere in South Africa, although, this being a fairy tale of sorts, it’s in an aoristic nowhere—and takes up with the new Anders even as Oona’s mother sighs that “our people” are changing. It’s true, for the whole town is slowly turning brown. Writes Hamid in a characteristically onrushing sentence, “The mood in town was changing, more rapidly than its complexion, for Anders could not as yet perceive any real shift in the number of dark people on the streets...but the mood, yes, the mood was changing, and the shelves of the stores were more bare, and at night the roads were more abandoned.” Anders returns to work at a local gym, where he finds that the few remaining White people are looking at him with “quick, evasive stares,” no longer trusting the man they called “doc” for his sore-muscle healing powers. When Anders’ father—the last White man of Hamid’s title—dies, there are no more of the “pale people who wandered like ghosts” in the town, and as time passes those who are left slowly lose their “memories of whiteness.” Hamid’s story is poignant and pointed, speaking to a more equitable future in which widespread change, though confusing and dislocating in the moment, can serve to erase the divisions of old as they fade away with the passing years.
A provocative tale that raises questions of racial and social justice at every turn.
