The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid haunts me still, though I finished it over a week ago. It’s a short tale with a compelling and easy to read narrative. The protagonist, a Pakistani, shares his life story over the course of a meal lasting for several hours to an American stranger he meets in a cafe. The author does a superior job of maintaining an underlying tone of tension beneath all of the dialogue. Though perhaps not indicative of a universal experience, the story sheds light on the assimilation of a young man into a culture very foreign from his own.