April 2015 Newsletter |

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid

Written in the form of a self-help manual, the novel tells the story of a young man’s journey from poverty to wealth. The unnamed protagonist outlines the steps a young Asian must take to become successful, using his own experiences as an example. Born in squalor in a village, our narrator’s family eventually moves into the city, where he is able to get a decent education–a vital step in the process of acquiring wealth. In adolescence, he takes a job delivering DVDs and meets the love of his life, a young woman who provides his first sexual experience and then disappears–from his life, but not from his mind. After university, he works for a company that changes expiry dates on food labels. Here he gets the idea to bottle tap water and sell it creating an empire.

The Guardian calls How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia “a tremendous novel: tender, sharp and formally daring, a portal into a fast-moving, vividly realised world”.

May