Exploring Mohsin Hamid’s “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” as a Postcolonial Bildungsroman

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject Literature - Comparative Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Bonn, language: English, abstract: This paper aims to show how a genre can be utilised in order to clarify specific struggles of a fictional character and make them universally accessible to any reader, which proves that Postcolonialism is not only a discussion about the past, but still influences people all over the world as colonialism finds its new ways to establish itself in many parts of the world as the colonial "legacies continue to inflect contemporary geo-political realities and conflicts around the world and impact upon how different people (are forced to) live today". Hamid's "The Reluctant Fundamentalist", one of the most well-known 21st century novels written by a Pakistani author intelligently combines the elements of the Bildungsroman and concepts of Postcolonialism. Changez is the protagonist of a modern Bildungsroman who experiences the power of a new form of colonialism and is made aware of his role as a colonised subject by his journeys throughout a crucial phase of identity formation in his life.