Changez-Pakistani is a university lecturer having a conversation with an American. He responds to a question about Princeton and begins by telling about his life from the time he left Lahore to go to university in America.
- Declares he is a lover of America, notices the bearing of the American, mission to find a cup of tea- excellent tea in Lahore, sits with back to wall, reaching under jacket,
- Changez was a brilliant student
- Applies for a gets a job, Jim who hires him recognizes hunger in Changez
- Changez comes from respectable, old money family-no longer wealthy but still important
- Works 3 jobs to support him through uni
Chapter 2:
- Observes attractive girls, refers to American girl he loved.
- Met Erica in Greece, on university holiday. she was a very popular girl likes him and his ‘strong sense of home’ He likes her beauty, muscles and tanned stomach, she tells him about Chris-her boyfriend who died-her home-‘ a guy with long skinny fingers’,
- she wants to be a novelist.
chapter 3
- coming to New York was a bit like ‘coming home’ for Changez, many speakers of Urdu driving cabs and running cafes, immediately a New Yorker, never an American-(people always say that most of America is a different place from the big cities). Changez is very fond of New York
- Loved his job with its office on the 41st floor, like another world-so powerful, so rich, so privileged,
- Changez recognises that Pakistan was once at the forefront of modernity but he feels a sense of shame and resentment that it is now poor -disparity
- Underwood Samson was a meritocracy and had young ‘guns’ trained ( almost like an army?)and working for it- teams trained by Sherman in the arts of economic fundamentalism-how to make as much money as possible and as quickly and directly as possible. Makes friends with Wainwright-another outsider. Changez and Wainwright try to speak the’ lingo’ of the dominant culture.
- Going to parties in the Hamptons and bathed in the warm glow of American lifestyle that money can buy
chapter 4
chapter 6
- Post 9/11 and New York in mourning, ,flowers and flags, ‘so grand a castle’’mighty civilisation’
- Sees Erica and she looks ‘older’, haunted by Chris and 9/11 has exacerbated her grief but she takes Changez to events with her but she is distant with people
- Attempt at love making fails -’she can’t get wet’ and tells him more about Chris,
chapter 7
- merica gripped by a growing and self righteous rage after 9/11, Pakistani cab drivers being assaulted, mosques being raided and muslims disappearing. Changez family in Pakistan unsettled- Afghanistan being bombed- he is unsettled by the inequity of the weaponry and power-Us bullying?
- Changez continues to focus on his job, doing a valuation in New Jersey that involved job cuts and he begins to see first hand the ramifications of job loss on people’s lives.
- Jim encourages him to ‘focus on the fundamentals’
chapter 8
- Changez visits Erica and she is in worse shape and her mother tells him ’she doesn’t need a boyfriend’. She lies on her bed, dazed and sleepy, can’t write. He can’t help her as she recedes into her Chris world.
- Changez worried and angered by America’s ‘dangerous nostalgia’ and her ‘determination to look back’
- Underwood Samson not perturbed by sorrows and continues to power forward in pursuit of business fundamentals- maximum productivity, dinner at Jim’s-understands outsider’s role
chapter 9
- Changez recognises that he has changed, rather than his country, and he was more like an unsympathetic American but gradually understands the different beauty of his family house and homeland,
- Things not too good in Pakistan-India threatening warfare- and Changez felt powerless, angry at the weakness of his country, and he felt like he was abandoning them when he returns to America. He did not shave his beard off for return and detained at airport on re entry-beard-form of protest? Or identity?
- Tries to get in touch with Erica, but it has taken him awhile to do so. She is at a clinic on the Hudson-she is gaunt, looks ‘devout’,not writing, but she places him in the past..’you were true..’
chapter 10
- Trip to Chile- Changez was no longer excited about the first class travel and regrets going at all. Sorry about the ‘illness of the spirit’ of Erica and broods about it.
- Meets Juan Bautista the chief of the publishing company they are valuing. He has an immediate impact on Changez-asks about books, Pablo Neruda, people’s jobs, explains about janissaries-exposes him to concepts about equality and art.
- Changez can’t concentrate on the job, worried about Pakistan and obsessed with websites about it, on the ‘threshold of great change’. His superior cautions him but Changez can’t focus and in the end he gives up and is sent back, in disgrace, to New York.
chapter 11
- On the plane back he thinks about America’s foreign policy and interventions in other country’s
- Gets the sack from his job but Jim is quite kind about it. Changez travels back to his apartment with box of belongings on the subway, different experience now-no longer so cosmipolitan, now more menacing.
- Confused and troubled and a bit lost with complexity of his conflicting emotions
chapter 12
- Changez leaves America nad returns to Pakistan and works as a university lecturer. He seems to be increasingly opposed to American actions and he is surrounded by energetic young students who are interested in Pakistan’s future. He gets involved in demonstrations and meetings, receives official warnings, interviewed by international media, feels like Kurtz waiting for the assassin.
