Moth Smoke

Mohsin Hamid’s first novel, Moth Smoke, examines class and privilege, drugs, and sex in 1990s Pakistan. The novel plots the unraveling of Darashikoh Shezad’s life. When the book opens, Daru is on trial for the death of a boy, and the text examines the events leading up to this false accusation. Multiple narrators chart Daru’s moral decline, and the examination of Daru’s choices from different angles asks the reader to be the judge of Daru’s guilt. Published in 2000, Moth Smoke was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and won a Betty Trask Award for the first novel written by an author under the age of 35.

All quotations in this guide derive from the Picador USA edition, originally published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2000.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain discussions of child death, drug addiction, and sexual exploitation.

Plot Summary

Darashikoh Shezad, known as Daru, rolls a joint in his car on the way to see his best friend, Aurangzeb Shah, or Ozi. They have not seen each other in a few years, as Ozi has been studying in America; he has also married Mumtaz Kashmiri, and the couple has an infant son, Muazzam. Daru has mixed feelings about seeing his friend.