The Last White Man

Mohsin Hamid has another novel out. Or rather, novella. Somehow, I have ended up reading all of his works, after being the only one to pick The Reluctant Fundamentalist in my trauma theory class, simply because I'd already read all of the other post-9/11 novels on the list. That one stuck, and I've read all of his other works since then. Exit West, his previous book, was at the top of my Books of 2017 list because it contains such a unique point of view, memorable ideas and beautiful language.

So my expectations for The Last White Man were pretty high (while a part of me was also prepared for something else, with the recent experiences of great authors turning out horrible books) and I was not disappointed. The premise is quite spectacular, especially in these tense times concerning colour: slowly but steadily every 'pale' person (Hamid's term) turns into a dark person. This happens suddenly, overnight. It is not just a complete change of skin colour, but a change of race (although none are ever named); eye colour, facial features, hair, build, etc also change. In short; no one can recognise you anymore, not even your own mother.

Now in the wrong hands, this premise can spiral out of control pretty quickly. But in The Last White Man, we focus on four people; the main character Anders (which incidentally means 'different' in my native language, so that was a nice word play) who is one of the first to transform, his father, his friend Oona, and her mother. We only get Anders' and Oona's perspective, the parents are described in general terms, mostly concerning their opinions of their children. The other two parents have died, which ties in with the theme of loss running through the story. But because the focus point is so small, we get to experience their realisations, feelings, expectations, interactions, without also experiencing the impact on society as a whole. There are some small references; Anders and Oona have to stay home from work because of riots, and Anders is driven from his house by a white mob when he is just one of the few that have transformed, but the perspective never really gets broader than that. Their experience is the center.

It is only a very short story, so going into the plot would be spoiling things, but the language is beautiful. Some sentences run an entire page, meandering from one person's view to the next, or wind through the experience of an entire afternoon, no stopping, stream-of-consciousness style without ever feeling contrived or artificial. One example, just the one, from when Anders has already transformed but hardly anyone else has, and he goes to work and experiences the following:

"Anders told himself the stares were natural, he would have done the same, it was not a regular situation, after all, and to reassure people, and to reassure himself too, he tried to engage in his normal banter, to be, as it were, like himself, to act undeniably like himself, but this was more difficult than he had imagined, impossible really, for what was more unlike oneself, more awkward, than trying to be oneself, and it was throwing him off, this artificiality, but he had no idea what to replace it with, and so he began instead to mirror the others around him, to echo the way they spoke and walked and moved and the way they held their mouths, like they were performing something, and he was trying to perform it too, and what it was he did not know, but whatever it was it was not enough, or his performance of it was off, because his sense of being observed, of being on the outside, looked at by those who were in, of messing things up for himself, deeply frustrating, did not go away all day."  

I only wish for two things: that the novel would have been longer, and that Mr Hamid won't take another five years to write his next book.