Moth Smoke

Penguin has released a new edition of Mohsin Hamid s debut novel Moth Smoke with a slightly misleading cover At first glance it seems that there is a couple against the sunset reaching out for each other Excuse me while I cringe It s only when you take a closer look that you realise they have rather jaded expressions on their faces and they are not actually reaching for each other she is passing a joint to him Now, this corresponds with the book better It s a novel about Pakistan in the 90s, abo [...]

Desires see no bounds, ecstasies have no walls, ambitions are not to confine, and we are left exhausted in heat of our own passions and unsaid illusions we so love to live in, as life goes on We are choked in sepulcher of our own doomed state, we are asphyxiated by the hands of overpowering demons of dark desires, and we are drowned deep in wintery black waters of fervent sensations that leave us only to float We keep burning day in and day out in the fervor and at the end, the circle ends and w [...]

Once we were eating mangoes, the three of us together I said Sindhris are my favourite Daru said, You can t juice Sindhri, only cut them He said, Chaunsas are my favourite because they re the best for sucking She said, I like Anwar Ratores, because they re small and you can have two or three at a time.The fact that this book mentions mangoes and all its eligible pure breeds is a testament to its Pakistani ness Never abuse mangoes in front of a Pakistani you will be clubbed It s our fuit, it s ou [...]

So giving this book 3 stars is kind of unfair because technically it lies on either 5 stars or 1 star I hated each and every character in this books, i hated their guts, i hated the hypocrisy and i hated their attitudes, their ignorance their infatuations and mostly their selfishness Which is something because there are not many writers who develop the characters well enough to be judges and criticized.Every character in this book was alive, i had a mental image of them, they were real talking a [...]

To be precise, good book with nothing good in it, complexes, jealousies, adultery relevantly having an affair with husband s best friends , alcohol, drugs and what not I never came through such complex characters and unfortunately I found them real rather than just characters If you know Lahore and its suburbs, you can actually relate to it very well, the existence of elite class, their immoralities, the working of drug suppliers, stories of red light areas so on and so forth Every character ju [...]

The frustration I felt while reading Moth Smoke is the kind of frustration you feel when you re watching a horror movie and you re watching the idiotic side character walk towards a noise in a dark house and you know they re about to face a gruesome death So you re sitting there yelling at the screen don t go there you stupid but they re slowly walking there anyway, not calling anyone for help, enabling you to feel both satisfied and slightly disgusted when the blood and gore starts.That was a v [...]

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It s only now, after my third reading of the book, that I m even attempting to put down my thoughts on it No, not because it s abstract or painful reading But because there were so many, many things in the book that I found beautiful, poetic, tragic, so real that I could reach out and touch it I was overwhelmed Even now, I doubt I d be able to do justice to how much I am in awe of Mohsin Hamid for crafting this masterpiece But I must start somewhere, for my own record, so I remember just why I f [...]

I actually read it as soon as the pirated version arrived on bookstores in Pakistan I think in 2001 Anyone who read it, waited restlessly for Mohsin s next project that came in the shape of Reluctant Fundamentalist.Strictly speaking from the narrative and characterization perspective, it is far better than Reluctant Fundamentalist However, latter is unsurpassable in terms of its relevance to the western reader.

My response to this book was curiously all over the place, something I don t usually experience Starting with four stars I felt transported, really drawn into the world of the book, the amount and quality of detail of the realistic linear part of the book are, at least at the beginning, just right for me , then cooling down to three stars I understand Hamid s philosophy of experimental novel writing nytimes 2014 03 02 boo but the experimental chapters just don t work for me , to two stars Then t [...]

The book begins and ends with excerpts from the story of Emperor Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal for his beautiful and beloved wife, Mumtaz Their children, Darashukoh and Aurangzeb, became enemies Mohsin Hamid names his characters for these historical people and shows a similar unraveling of childhood relationships.Was it determined from the start that Dara Shukoh and his friend Aurangzeb, known as Ozi, would become rivals As young competitors Dara was smarter and stronger, but his wealthy [...]

Mohsin Hamid writes with credibility and a certain conviction that tears characters off the fabric of pakistan s social tapestry and paints instead a vivid etching in grey scales The narrative forebodes the breakdown of the society s very weak fundamental values as would be the case in any upwardly mobile urban story.Hamid is a subtle craftsman at work.His characters reveal the story of Daru the social outcast Most significantly Mumtaz holds up the mirror to bring the two paralles in her life oz [...]

An easy, enjoyable read I sat back and relaxed, reading it slowly, savoring the beautiful, almost lyrical prose A breeze tastes my sweat and I shiver, shutting my eyes and raising my arms with it, wanting to fly I walk in circles, tracing the ripples that would radiate if the stars fell from the sky through the lake of this lawn, one by one, like a rainstorm moving slowly into the breeze, toward the tree, each splash, each circle, closer.And with a last stardrop, a last circle, I arrive, and she [...]

This book was amazing 4.25 stars The infamous trial of Darashikoh and Aurangzeb sons of Shah Jehan after the wars of succession was used as an allegory to explain the main plot of the book What is worth noticing is that though Daru and Ozi were friends, their relationship in the beginning was that of brothers, thus the allegory consisting of two brothers They turned against each other and Aurangzeb was the doom of his own brother The social and political problems of our society at the time of th [...]

Moth Smoke is a fictitious work by Moshin Hamid about the modern society of Lahore, one of Pakistan s larger cities, where the socioeconomic factors have a major impact on people The novel displays the power and privilege of the rich, and how this shadows over the poor Hamid shows a society that corrupt and overrun by crime and drugs The novel also depicts the beauty of friendships and love, as well as the ugliness of betrayal, addiction, adultery and lies amid economic turmoil in Pakistan.The p [...]

I chose this book because it was written by a Pakistani You get a different picture of the country from this book than you do from Three Cups of Tea This story is set in Lahore and the narrator hero, the son of a soldier killed in action, lives on the fringes of the wealthy corrupt class in Lahore his father s comrade, after leaving the military and entering government service where he found opportunities to make lots of not so honest money has taken Daru s family sort of under his wing So Daru [...]

This is a first novel It feels like one It s about a young man s self destructive streak fuelled by a failing economy and bad choices To me, it never rises above this one line synopsis.Hamid, it turns out, is all about the narrative device His first person narrative in The Reluctant Fundamentalist elevated an ordinary plot Here he tries constant foreshadowing of Daru s eventual doom and the occasional chapter told from the perspective of each of the side characters These chapters turn out to be [...]

let me think, Where do I start This book was extremely weird and unsettling and the fact that I was initially impressed by this author totally baffles me I actually got really bored by the time Darashikoh loses his job The author treated me to long, boring, tortuous explanations Firstly, there was the whole Professor Superb story that I didn t get at all or I didn t try to understand cause well, the book didn t grab my attention Then, the author gave really grotesque explanations that repeatedly [...]

Moth Smoke is a novel that perfectly captures the geist at a particular time in a particular third world country The country is Pakistan and the geist is drug addled, soporific, deeply asleep The protagonist, Daru, which means moonshine in English, although from a middle class background himself, is a product of elite schools and westernized upbringing in Pakistan arrogant and unable to identify with Pakistanis at large, detached, alienated, apathetic and ultimately marginalized in a society fee [...]

Finished reading August 5th 2013 Many boys, probably most boys, have a first love before they fall in love with a woman It begins the moment two boys realize they d die for one another, that each cares for the other than he does for himself, and it lasts usually until a second love comes on the scene, because most hearts aren t big enough to love than one person like that view spoiler I always like books with a foreign setting, so Moth Smoke was an easy choice The story of a lost soul in the m [...]

In Moth Smoke, Mohsin Hamid crafts a complex story and leaves you to judge the characters, their insecurities, their arrogance, and their crimes He has written a candid and uncomfortably honest account of contemporary Pakistan.Dara has lost his job, and all desire to pull out from the economic slump that leaves him in He is resigned to let his insecurities take him over Reuniting with his childhood pal Ozi and Ozi s beautiful wife Mumtaz, bring out all the hitherto buried uncertainties Dara s cl [...]

OK, forget the press on Pakistan, all those fundamentalists fundos in the lingo of this book s narrator and hazy threat to the West, all those people not like us who scare us so This is sexy Pakistan, with lashings of Scotch, plentiful hash, a pastime of adultery among the rich and bored, and big flashy SUV s crashing through the potholed roads on their way to pleasure I once saved a Pakistani banker from drowning in the Pearl Continental pool in Peshawar, and have nor forgotten the reward of a [...]

I read The Reluctant Fundamentalist and liked it, so I figured I might like Hamid s first book too But not anywhere near as much From very early in the book I don t like Darashikoh, the protagonist Intelligent Arrogant, and definitelly not intelligent in action Self destructive He loses a job his rich friend Ozi has fixed him, and goes slowly downhill from there There are a lot of times I feel like smacking him no money for food but money for drugs no money for paying his slave servant but money [...]

Daru, our protagonist, is permanently unhappy disconnected from his feelings, his friends, his life Perhaps this is due to the death of his mother by a stray celebratory bullet when Daru was young Daru drifts in and out of modern elite society in Lahore, Pakistan in the late 1990 s The book was published in 2000 It turns out that modern elite society in Lahore is a lot like modern elite society in, let s say, Los Angeles The elite, many educated in American colleges, drive Hummers to and from th [...]

Moth smoke is what happens when the moth, in love with the flame, circles ever closer until its wings catch fire and it is incinerated The flame remains unchanged during the interaction.This novel depicts the destructive power of finding love in the forbidden It relates the lies we tell ourselves and others, and it details the consequences of those lies Set in modern day Lahore, Pakistan, it is at once familiar and alien at the same time A reader may find influences from Crime and Punishment Rod [...]

There were parts I liked about this bookd parts I could have just ripped out of the book and thrown away I don t think I d recommend this one I don t regret reading it It was entertaining.but not a must read.

Do not waste your time Why are people giving this rubbish 5 stars In a nutshell all characters bar one Manucci the servant are extremely unlikeable, not to mention poorly developed The plot is flimsy, pretentious and ill conceived Whether or not the characters are unlikeable, they need to be engaging and intriguing, which in this case for me they weren t Is this meant to be a moral tale or a social comment on Lahore in the 90s as other reviewers have implied If so it fails miserably at both The [...]

Either I am too naive to understand this book or the book was just purposeless.And yes writer is obsessed with sweat.

This is exactly the kind of book I have been wanting to read for a long time character driven, lucid narrative, gripping story This is the exact opposite of coming of age genre but is equally, if not , enchanting Mohsin, at the pinnacle of his creativity, tells the story of the decline of Darashikoh or, Daru while he scoots through a lethal affair with his best friend s wife amidst weed, hash and heroine Joining him, is obviously the equally flawed but a powerful and sexy Mumtaz the wife of the [...]

3.75 starsThe beginning and middle were extraordinary to me The ending just fluttered A complete and utter collapse.