Book Review of The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid

UPDATED: 2/5/2023

Disclosure: This review includes affiliate links. Purchases made through the link provide a small commission to us at no cost to you.

(click the image above to purchase this book through Amazon)

192 pages, published in August 2022

YOU MAY ENJOY THIS BOOK IF YOU LIKE:

Literary Fiction * Dystopian Fiction

TRAVEL INSPIRATION:

The exact location setting of this novel is not clearly defined, though it feels as if it is set in the United States or perhaps the UK based on the race relations it explores and the fact that the author has lived in both countries himself. This novel could be set in many places and the place itself is not the point. The novel is focused on the interactions of people who are in a place, a community, together.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: mohsin hamid

Mohsin Hamid was born in Lahore, Pakistan, and lived in the United States for several years as a child while his father pursued his PhD in California. Hamid later returned to the US to attend college at Princeton before matriculating at Harvard Law and finding himself working in New York City at McKenzie. In 2001, just before 9/11, Hamid moved to London.

The Last White Man is Mohsin Hamid’s fifth novel. I’ve read and enjoyed two prior novels of his: The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), and Exit West (2017), both of which were short-listed for the Booker Prize. He is also author of How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013) and Moth Smoke (2000).

REVIEW OF the last white man BY mohsin hamid

As with the two prior novels of Hamid's that I have read in the last few years, The Last White Man tackles contemporary challenges that pertain, at least in part, to race or ethnic origin. I have known people who have both loved his writing and been turned off by it, and I think the two main routes that lead readers either towards or away from Hamid are the topics of his novels and his writing style, which is perhaps best described as perfunctory. I'd add another word to his style in this particular novel: exacting. Characters often use a particular word, think better of it, and then use a more appropriate word. It is an exercise in the importance of language itself and what we mean, what we say, and the vast abyss that often lies in between.

The Last White Man follows Anders, who is the son of the man who, we eventually learn, is the last white man. That is not because the white men themselves have been eradicated or rather they have eradicated but not slaughtered (to take a trick out of Hamid's writing book). Anders awakens in the morning and is surprised to discover he is in bed with a man and not just any man, one with dark skin. With the slothfulness of morning wearing off, Anders finally realizes that his skin has turned brown and that he is no longer white.

Anders and his girlfriend, Oona, are the novel's central characters with supporting roles played by their family members. Anders is confronting the gradual demise of his ill father. The fact of his impending death is both surprising and not surprising. Of course it would come, but that didn't make it any less surprising when it was on the horizon, as he relates. Oona's father has died prior to the novel's start and whose death was the beginning of the end of her brother, who allowed himself to be enveloped in the cold arms of addiction. Oona is left with her mother, who is obsessed with a certain television channel and information on the internet, both of which allow her to feel superior with her supposed inside knowledge.

This novel takes two people living through ordinary challenges in life and places them in a broader society that is unmoored. The society is confronted with an impossible situation that unfolds so very slowly that it is almost imperceptible.

There are, of course, obvious parallels to Kafka's The Metamorphosis, but what is unnerving is the dulled emotion in how Hamid's characters respond to the change and react to and interact with those around them. The Last White Man does tackle some real under-currents in many countries that are seeing a decrease in their white population but the deeper message or point that Hamid is trying to express does not come through clearly. There are several moments of brilliance like when a news story discusses a white man killed by a dark man, only to realize it was the suicide of a white man who had turned dark.

There was so much more opportunity for Hamid to really explore the issues more deeply instead of scratching the surface. For example, under what circumstances did the violent outbreaks in communities occur, why did the people generally appear to adjust so rapidly, even characters like Oona's mother, who was not predisposed to openness to non-whites? The fog and haziness surrounding Anders and Oona's world was not as effective in this novel as it was in Hamid's prior novel, Exit West.

Hamid's novel was a ripple on the surface emanating out from a skipped stone instead of a plunge into a deep topic. He did not particularly address how the previously dark people felt about this situation, and there is perhaps a nearly imperceptible message in the fact that the title has to do with men when in fact the changes were entirely non-gendered in nature.

I enjoyed The Last White Man as a quick read (it is short), but it was not nearly as significant as Hamid's prior works that I have read, nor does it do its own topic justice.