Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Nostalgia and longing for home figure prominently in Mohsin Hamid’s texts, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” and “Exit West.” However, nostalgia functions differently in each novel. “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” focuses on critiquing harmful modes of longing, whereas “Exit West” reclaims nostalgia in the immigrant narrative as a means for human connection and emotional healing. In analyzing the former text, this paper uses the theories of nostalgia scholar Svetlana Boym to unpack how Hamid portrays the dangers of both the absence of nostalgia and “restorative nostalgia”—a term for indulgent non-critical forms of longing. Hamid depicts this through the allegorical figures of Erica and Underwood Samson, while instead heralding the “reflective,” or critical, nostalgia of the protagonist Changez as a viable alternative. In the latter text, the paper analyzes how nostalgia imbricates Saeed’s relationship with religion, as well as how the loss of national home is succored through recourse to natural, eternal imagery of a planetary home. Likewise, the paper questions how Hamid’s intermingling of the past and present frames the nostalgic desire to re-access the past as productive. By examining these two texts, I aim to gain insight into nostalgia’s complex function in the contemporary global novel and human experience.