The Final White Man By Mohsin Hamid

Like his earlier novel Exit West, Mohsin Hamid, in his new novel makes use of a fantastical trope to inform a recent story which offers with the intense points like racism.

Taking a cue from Kafka’s much-celebrated story Metamorphosis, the novel opens with a scene the place one high-quality morning a white man, Anders, wakes as much as discover he has turned ‘a deep and plain brown.’ Initially, he thinks that it have to be a nasty dream however then it dawns upon him that he has really misplaced his whiteness. His new pores and skin tone not solely impacts him psychologically but additionally alters his relationship with everybody round him. He finds that with the change of color of pores and skin a hell lot of privileges are additionally gone. He’s not the identical Anders. He tries his finest to cover from the world round him. As a brown-skinned, he begins to grasp that he should observe the site visitors guidelines meticulously, in any other case, he is perhaps penalised by the authorities, one thing he’d have simply gotten away with if he have been his former self. There are various extra issues he can’t do with a brand new pores and skin tone like shifting round with a gun. Even his motion on the street along with his girlfriend, Oona, who continues to be white, attracts folks’s consideration. On one event his boss discreetly tells him he ought to kill himself as a substitute of residing a life with darker pores and skin.

However, for Oona, a good friend turned girlfriend, his transformation just isn’t one thing that disturbs her, as a substitute, she finds it amusing. And, she has a distinct sort of expertise with Anders because it helps her to take care of the grief of dropping his brother to a drug overdose.

Subsequently, different white males additionally start to show brown and all the metropolis is quick turning into a brown majority, which comforts Anders that he’s not the one one however many extra. However, on the identical time, he feels repulsive towards folks with brown pores and skin. And that emotional battle has been superbly captured by Hamid. Finally, the protagonist accepts the modified actuality and begins to really feel snug along with his new pores and skin color.

The difficulty of race relations and racism is one thing that plagues our globe and an enormous inhabitants of individuals of color nonetheless endure for one thing that was nature’s reward to them. And, we’re nonetheless far far-off from fulfilling Martin Luther King’s dream of a nation the place folks ‘won’t be judged by the color of their pores and skin, however by the content material of their character.’ The writer, by means of this story, reminds us about King’s goals of egalitarianism and racial equality.

Like at all times, Mohsin Hamid writes with flourish and reveals his mastery over wordplay. The Final White Man, nevertheless, doesn’t have intriguing components of Exit West and nor has an impeccably fleshed-out protagonist like Changez of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, however, nonetheless it’s extremely readable.

(Abdullah Khan is a Mumbai primarily based novelist, literary critic, screenwriter and Banker. His debut novel, Patna Blues, has been translated into 10 languages. He will be reached at abdullah71@gmail.com)