"From "one of his generation's most inventive and gifted writers" (The New York Times), intimate and sharply observed commentary on life, art, politics, and "the war on terror." Mohsin Hamid's brilliant, moving, and extraordinarily clever novels have not only made him an international bestseller, they have earned him a reputation as a "master critic of the modern global condition" (Foreign Policy). His stories are at once timeless and of-the-moment, and his themes are universal: love, language, ambition, power, corruption, religion, family, identity. Here he explores this terrain from a different angle in essays that deftly counterpoise the personal and the political, and are shot through with the same passion, imagination, and breathtaking shifts of perspective that gives his fiction its unmistakable electric charge. A "water lily" who has called three countries on three continents his home-Pakistan, the birthplace to which he returned as a young father; the United States, where he spent his childhood and young adulthood; and Britain, where he married and became a citizen-Hamid writes about overlapping worlds with fluidity and penetrating insight. Whether he is discussing courtship rituals or pop culture, drones or the rhythms of daily life in an extended family compound, he transports us beyond the scarifying headlines of an anxious West and a volatile East, beyond stereotype and assumption, and helps to bring a dazzling diverse global culture within emotional and intellectual reach. "-- Provided by publisher.

"From the bestselling author of How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, an intimate and sharply observed commentary-in-essays on life, art, politics, and "the war on terror.""-- Provided by publisher.

Once upon a life -- Art and the other Pakistans -- When Updike saved me from Morrison (and myself) -- In concert, no touching -- International relations -- The countdown -- A home for water lilies -- Down the tube -- On fatherhood -- It had to be a sign -- Avatar in Lahore -- Don't angry me -- Personal and political intertwined -- Pereira transforms -- My reluctant fundamentalist -- Rereading -- Get fit with Haruki Murakami -- Enduring love of the second person -- Are we too concerned that characters be "likable"? -- Where is the Great American Novel by a woman? -- How do e-books change the reading experience? -- Are the new "golden age" TV shows the new novels? -- The usual ally -- Divided we fall -- After sixty years, will Pakistan be reborn? -- A beginning -- Fear and silence -- Feverish and flooded, Pakistan can yet thrive -- Discontent and its civilizations -- Uniting Pakistan's minority and majority -- Osama bin Laden's death -- Why they get Pakistan wrong -- Nationalism should retire at sixty-five -- To fight India, we fought ourselves -- Why drones don't help -- Islam is not a monolith.