Random Things Tours: The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid

 

In a mildy kafkaesque scenario that evolves slowly into a rioting episode which reminds of Blindness by Saramago, Anders, the character of Mohsin Hamid´s latest book The Last White Man wakes up one morning as a brown person. 

First, he is shocked, experiences disturbing physical sensations as he repeatedly looks himself into the mirror. He is hiding from his work colleagues. He is trying to figure out if he is contagious or not - reminiscences of our new Covid-inspired vocabulary. No one recognize him on the street. Yet, he is seen as a brown person and this kind of attention is unusual for Anders. His girlfriend, Oona is that kind of yoga instructor that meditates in the morning and is devoted to her middle class priviledged lifestyle. She is the caregiver of her mother which sounds sometimes like your average QAnon (potential) follower. 

Inspired by the racial profiling he witnesses after 11/9, Hamid´s book keeps his feet in the fantasy as in Exit West, but in a more story-focused way, although the frame is fantastic and dystopic. There are a lot of ironic references and the characters do behave ridiculously and capitalistically wrong. It is a world of the mind that nevertheless sounds as absurd as our everyday political reality, in America and abroad. 

The Last White Man is a fictional representation of an utopic post-racial world. A short novel, that does not read as easy and this is not only because of the very extensively and complex built sentences. But it is a fascinating interpretation which adds a different view on race, particularly the growing literary bibliography on race from the last decade.

Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own