Like his previous novel Exit West, Mohsin Hamid, in his new novel uses a fantastical trope to tell a contemporary story which deals with the serious issues like racism.
Taking a cue from Kafka’s much-celebrated story Metamorphosis, the novel opens with a scene where one fine morning a white man, Anders, wakes up to find he has turned 'a deep and undeniable brown.’ Initially, he thinks that it must be a bad dream but then it dawns upon him that he has actually lost his whiteness. His new skin tone not only impacts him psychologically but also alters his relationship with everyone around him. He finds that with the change of colour of skin a hell lot of privileges are also gone. He is no longer the same Anders. He tries his best to hide from the world around him. As a brown-skinned, he begins to understand that he must follow the traffic rules meticulously, otherwise, he might be penalised by the authorities, something he’d have easily gotten away with if he were his former self. There are many more things he can’t do with a new skin tone like moving around with a gun. Even his movement on the road with his girlfriend, Oona, who is still white, draws people's attention. On one occasion his boss discreetly tells him he should kill himself instead of living a life with darker skin.
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But, for Oona, a friend turned girlfriend, his transformation is not something that disturbs her, instead, she finds it amusing. And, she has a different kind of experience with Anders as it helps her to deal with the grief of losing his brother to a drug overdose.
Subsequently, other white men also begin to turn brown and the entire city is fast becoming a brown majority, which comforts Anders that he is not the only one but many more. But, at the same time, he feels repulsive toward people with brown skin. And that emotional conflict has been beautifully captured by Hamid. Eventually, the protagonist accepts the changed reality and begins to feel comfortable with his new skin colour.
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The issue of race relations and racism is something that plagues our globe and a vast population of people of colour still suffer for something that was nature's gift to them. And, we are still far far away from fulfilling Martin Luther King's dream of a nation where people 'will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.' The author, through this story, reminds us about King’s dreams of egalitarianism and racial equality.
Like always, Mohsin Hamid writes with flourish and shows his mastery over wordplay. The Last White Man, however, doesn’t have intriguing elements of Exit West and nor has an impeccably fleshed-out protagonist like Changez of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, but, still it is highly readable.
(Abdullah Khan is a Mumbai based novelist, literary critic, screenwriter and Banker. His debut novel, Patna Blues, has been translated into 10 languages. He can be reached at abdullah71@gmail.com)
