Although that outlook may be fashionable on some US campuses, it has become practically universal in Pakistan, a country blighted by fundamentalists who display no hint of reluctance at all. In a sense, he is the embodiment of the argument that says that America has created its own enemies. But more intriguing, and arguably more impressive, is the fact that Changez is a sympathetic figure in spite of some objectionable opinions – he admits, for example, to being "remarkably pleased" by 9/11. One of the novel's notable achievements is the seamless manner in which ideology and emotion, politics and the personal are brought together into a vivid picture of an individual's globalised revolt. Gradually, however, we are brought to wonder whether the person in jeopardy is not the stranger, but Changez himself. The stranger is fidgety and anxious, and at first Changez's elaborate self-justifications for his contentious sentiments begin to suggest that perhaps he is a more sinister figure than he allows. All of this Changez reveals in an almost archly formal, and epically one-sided, conversation with the mysterious stranger that rolls back and forth over his developing concern with issues of cultural identity, American power and the victimisation of Pakistan.
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