Five of the best 9/11 novels

At The Daily Beast, Jimmy So named five novels that deal with 9/11 in significant if oblique ways, including:

The Reluctant Fundamentalist
by Mohsin Hamid

A young Pakistani named Changez tells an American the story of his life in America in the months before and after 9/11. Changez went to Princeton, was hired as a business appraiser by a New York firm, and falls in love with Erica, an aspiring writer and daughter of an Upper East Side family, whose friends blindly assert their cultural superiority, which rubs off on Changez, much to his own disgust. This might seem a set piece for preaching ambivalent values, but it is precisely the complexity of the immigrant ambivalence that makes the substance of the confession so deft and troubling. Mira Nair directed a film adaptation last year.

Read about the other books on So's list.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is one of Ahmede Hussain's five top books in recent South Asian literature.

The Page 69 Test: The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

Also see: David Ulin's five essential 9/11 books, five best works of literature on 9/11, five of the best new 9/11 books and eight worthy 9/11 books.

--Marshal Zeringue