How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia is a 2013 satirical novel written by Mohsin Hamid. It tells the story of an unnamed narrator in an unconventional format: written from the second person point of view, it is ostensibly a self-help manual that unfolds in novelistic prose. At the beginning of each chapter, the narrator offers a brief discourse on topics as diverse as self-help, memoir, debt, or the reading and writing of literature. Then he puts the reader in his position and refers to them as “you” during the narrative portions of the novel.

Each of its twelve chapters are titled with a self-help precept such as “Focus On The Fundamentals.” When followed, the twelve rules will ostensibly teach someone what is needed to become filthy rich in rising Asia. However, the narrator, who both writes and follows the rules, becomes wealthy without becoming fulfilled for much of the novel. In the book’s final irony, he realizes that while eleven of the rules helped him gain wealth, only one of them made him happy.