Sebastian Shakespeare
Caught in the Middle
9/11 continues to cast a long shadow over contemporary fiction, from Jay McInerney’s The Good Life to Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children. The Reluctant Fundamentalist tackles the subject from a different perspective: that of the well-educated Pakistani who is caught between two worlds. The novel takes the form of a conversation between Changez, a bearded Pakistani university lecturer, and a nameless American he befriends in a Lahore café. A graduate of the Princeton Class of 2001, Changez has turned his back on the American Dream and returned to his homeland to advocate disengagement from the United States.
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'Sabotage became so prevalent that bankers even created their own terms – ‘asymmetric information’, ‘lack of financial literacy’, ‘the principal-agent dilemma’ – to describe how they might turn a dime from customers’ gullibility or ignorance.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/master-criminals-of-the-universe
'Unlike much that was extracted from India, these paintings were not plunder, and those who created them were properly remunerated and often received due credit.'
@PParkerWriting on 'Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/artists-for-hire
‘"I feel", Lowell told Hardwick ... "as if I were pulled apart and thinning into mist, or rather being torn apart and still preferring that state to making a decision."'
Richard Davenport-Hines on the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/yours-unfaithfully-2