“The Face in the Mirror”
by Mohsin Hamid
from the May 16, 2022 issue of The New Yorker
This week we get an excerpt from Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man, which will be published in August. This will be Hamid’s fifth novel. I have only read his second, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which I liked back when it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2007. His most recent novel, Exit West, was also shortlisted, and though it got a lost of good reviews from folks I trust I’m afraid I haven’t read it yet.
The forthcoming novel has an interesting premise: people are waking up with different skin color. This story doesn’t hesitate to introduce that immediately. Here is the first paragraph of this story.
One morning Anders, a white man, woke up to find he had turned a deep and undeniable brown. This dawned upon him gradually, and then suddenly, first as a sense as he reached for his phone that the early light was doing something strange to the color of his forearm, subsequently, and with a start, as a momentary conviction that there was somebody else in bed with him, male, darker, but this, terrifying though it was, was surely impossible, and he was reassured that the other moved as he moved, was in fact not a person, not a separate person, but was just him, Anders, which caused a wave of relief, for if the idea that someone else was there was only imagined, then of course the notion that he had changed color was a trick, too, an optical illusion, or a mental artifact, born in the slippery halfway place between dreams and wakefulness, except that by now he had his phone in his hands and he had reversed the camera, and he saw that the face looking back at him was not his at all.
This reminds me that I really want to go back and read Exit West, and I’m definitely interested in The Last White Man. How about you? Please feel free to comment below!
Also, thanks for the well wishes. I’m doing a lot better this week!
This is SO reminiscent of the opening of “Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka. And that is not a criticism, the said opening is one of the all-time greats in the history of literature. It would definitely make me want to read on.
This is an amazing short story that stands apart on its own even though part of a novel coming out in August. Hamid says so much about identity, about spiritual identity and how anyone trusts or gets to know anyone else of different color or (even his own father). I know this is about skin color but the passages about the son’s relationship with his father reminded me of my relationship with my father especially on the last day with him just before he died. I know this about white skin and dark skin being way too polarized from ever feeling comfortable together. But I also feel it is about something more basic: how we come to know, trust or love anyone at all. Even a close family member. And that’s just brilliant because I never would have thought about it all in quite that way. Looking forward to Hamid’s book in August.
Larry, you’ve perfectly summed up the fineness of this story as it works on two levels–as reflection on racism and society and on a more metaphysical or psychological level.
One thing I found interesting is that race is only an issue when there’s difference. An all-black society (as this ends up being) can function peacefully as had a probably almost all-white one (I’m assuming we’re in Holland for some reason? Scandinavia?) previously functioned well.
In the grave, where we end up our skeletons ultimately will bear no trace of pigmentation.
Thus–this particular tale might in the end be remembered as a moving memory of a father and son relationship and their mutual attempts to deal with death with dignity given their own limitations (mental and physical).
I’m on the same page with you guys. I would not have known it was an excerpt if I had not been told. The story is complete. In addition to the relationship observations that Larry and Ken mentioned, I would add several references to being not yourself, not existing. Anders losing who he is by his color changing is the most obvoius. But here is a paragraph about his father:
“The pain had reached proportions where periodically there was nothing else left, yearlong hours when there was no person, no Anders’ fater, just the pain, but then the pain receded for a bit and there was a person again.”
Also I liked the run-on sentences, which were written so well that they were not difficult to understand. Unlike Henry James.
Trevor — glad you’re feeling better.
Thanks, William! I feel back to normal!
Great!
Ken,
Thanks for the compliment and for an excellent summary of what I was trying to say. Senior history fan saw how powerful the story’s opening was and it’s similarity to Kafka which gives it an internal metaphysical viewpoint or internal perception of the mind as to condition and societal status. The no pigmentation on skeletal bones is a powerful statement that I had not thought about. It is an excellent point. If there is to be survival (opposite of buried underground) there cannot be any racism. Mostly because otherwise everything can often appear headed in the wrong direction. Hope a lot of people read Hamid’s book. Hopefully it’s merits will be appreciated and a meaningful conversation will occur when the book releases in August.
Larry
This back and forth is why I treasure this site. I started a discussion on a more current story–Occupational Hazards–and am curious what people thought about it. I was positive about it. Trevor, glad you’re better and you run a great site.
I’ve now had the opportunity to read Exit West, (short-listed for the Booker Prize 2017). I actually listened to it on audio book. It was read by the author himself, who comes across as the most gentle, thoughtful and compassionate man. A book well worth reading, and well “on it” as regards the plight of those in a war zone and refugees from same.
The story’s premise, as I read it, is that a typical white person would find waking up with brown skin as revolting and alienating as waking up transformed into a giant cockroach, like Gregor Samsa. This seems… not true. I think a person of any race, on experiencing radical overnight pigmentation change, would consult a doctor, would share their unusual experience with friends, and otherwise continue their life as usual.