The Last White Man: A Novel

Twice nominated for the Booker Prize, Mohsin Hamid is the author of five novels and one collection of essays. Hamid was born in Pakistan and is of Punjabi and Kashmiri descent. Hamid is also a British citizen, and he attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School. His novels are experimental in style, using narrative techniques such as second-person narration, multiple voices, or extended dramatic monologue. His genre choices and genre elements include mock self-help guides and magical realism. Magical realism allows for an alternate reality expressed from a non-dominant or non-Western perspective. Hamid’s novels engage with themes that challenge hegemonic positions of privilege that intersect with race, ethnicity, class, and national identity. His first novel shattered the conventions of English-language subcontinental writing, which was firmly situated in a postcolonial framework of nationalism.

Indian novelist Anita Desai claimed that Hamid represented the zamana of the 21st-century subcontinent (Desai, Anita. “Passion in Lahore.” The New York Review, 21 Dec. 2000). This Urdu term is similar to the concept of zeitgeist or cultural climate of an era.