• 4. All That Man Is & The Reluctant Fundamentalist

  • Mar 1 2023
  • Length: 42 mins
  • Podcast

4. All That Man Is & The Reluctant Fundamentalist

  • Summary

  • For Episode 4 of Book Chat, we travel back just a decade or so, to Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist and David Szalay's short stories in a novel, All That Man Is.

    We discuss Mohsin Hamid's ability to condense big ideas - what makes a fundamentalist? What biases are you bringing to the story? - into readable prose (and his other magical novels like Exit West) and David Szalay's attempt to condense modern masculinity from teen to OAP, as it roves Europe - in one book.

    You can get in touch bookchatpod@gmail.com

    Sound by Joel Grove and production by Pandora Sykes


    Books/articles mentioned:

    All That Man Is and London and the South-East by David Szalay

    The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Exit West and The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid

    Games and Rituals and Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny

    The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré

    Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

    The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis

    If on a winter’s night a traveller by Italo Calvino

    Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

    The Runaways by Fatima Bhutto

    ‘All That Man Is’, by David Szalay, review by Christopher Tayler for the Financial Times – https://www.ft.com/content/fe2db1c4-f797-11e5-803c-d27c7117d132

    'All That Man Is,' and a Lot He Is Not, in David Szalay's View, by Dwight Garner for The New York Times – https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/books/review-all-that-man-is-and-a-lot-he-is-not-in-david-szalays-view.html

    I Pledge Allegiance, by Karen Olsson for The New York Times – https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/books/review/Olsson.t.html


    Clip attributions:

    David Szalay on Radio 4 Bookclub, 2019

    Mohsin Hamid on Radio 4 Bookclub, 2011


    Subscribe to Books + Bits: https://pandorasykes.substack.com/


    Our books for Ep 5:

    The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

    Memorial by Bryan Washington


    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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