What is Mohsin Hamid reading?

Mohsin Hamid, whose novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, talked to the Christian Science Monitor about his recent viewing pleasures and what he's been listening to.

And what he's been reading:

Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih, a Sudanese novelist, and one of the most important Arabic-language novelists. It's the story of a man who has studied abroad and returned to life in Sudan – about the sort of cultural conflict and internal conflict from colonization. It's a very short novel and a number of people had recommended it to me based on what I had written. The subject matter is interesting: the story of this crisis of someone returning from life in the West. And the second thing is part of the novel takes the form of one man telling the story to another, so that's a similarity. Before that I read Graham Greene's The Quiet American, which I had never read before and which is fantastic, a real masterpiece of compression. It's such a short novel that takes on so much politically with a tight plot. Many people told me that I would like it and they were right.

Check out Hamid's recent encounters with movies and music.

Mohsin Hamid's most influential book.

Mohsin Hamid's 10 favorite books

The Page 69 Test: The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

--Marshal Zeringue