How to get filthy rich...

There used to be a time when I would finish a novel in one day. Acutally, that isn't really as long ago as it seems, because I finished The Ocean at the End of the Lane in one day at well. But that's not a proper novel, more like a novella, so it doesn't really count. I'm talking about a novel novel, a book heavy with symbolism and layers and importance and meaning.
Anyway, last Wednesday I had a day off to compensate for a ludicrously busy week, and I both started and finished How to get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid.
Short intermezzo here, because most of you probably have not heard of Mohsin Hamid before. He has only published three novels so far, the first one I haven't yet read, the second The Ruluctant Fundamentalist, which I read for a course (we were supposed to pick a post-9/11 novel, and almost everybody went for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close or The Terrorist, but I'd already read both of those, so I went for the novel nobody else picked). It is a long monologue by a Pakistani man to an American tourist in Pakistan, and it leaves you completely bewildered as to who is the terrorist and who is the tourist, and also as to what is right and wrong in the world. And then How to get Filty Rich in Rising Asia.
Hamid knows what he's talking about, as he was actually born in Pakistan, although he is not your average Pakistani in that he actually lived in the States for quite a while because his father was a university professor (how many of us can say that, anyway), and he did go to Princeton (same thing), but in order to become a recognized Pakistani writer you will need some sort of credentials or the world will just ignore you.
And his novels are, in fact, really really good.
Anyway, How to... is in essence a self-help book, telling the reader how to get filthy rich in rising Asia. That is to say, there is no main character. The main character is 'you', the reader, and you follow all the steps set out for you to become filthy rich (move to the city, get an education, learn from a master, and typically, don't fall in love). There are no names in this novel, the characters don't have any names, but also the cities and countries you move in remain typically name-less. This gives the universal feel of people moving from their villages to the city to carve out a life for themselves, and it is a novel of universal truths.
At the same time the novel analyses its own function of self-help book, coming to the conclusion that it may not have been entirely honest with you at some point. In a weird way that makes it a meta-meta novel, breaking down the forth wall in so many places it feels almost impossible to read another 'normal'  third person narrative. But the fact that the full title is How to get Filty Rich in Rising Asia: a novel should say enough: although clearly a self-help book, this remains a novel in the end.
I read about this novel in a Dutch newspaper, because it has been translated into Dutch (loosing most of its poetic language and style, according to the reviewer), which I think is great, because more people should have access to this great author. And as I've shown, even though it is heavy with importance and symbolism and layers and everything, it is possible to finish it in one day.