For Episode 4 of Book Chat, we travel back just a decade or so, to Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist and David Szalay's short stories in a novel, All That Man Is.

We discuss Mohsin Hamid's ability to condense big ideas - what makes a fundamentalist? What biases are you bringing to the story? - into readable prose (and his other magical novels like Exit West) and David Szalay's attempt to condense modern masculinity from teen to OAP, as it roves Europe - in one book.

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Sound by Joel Grove and production by Pandora Sykes

Books/articles mentioned:

All That Man Is and London and the South-East by David Szalay

The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Exit West and The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid

Games and Rituals and Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis

If on a winter’s night a traveller by Italo Calvino

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

The Runaways by Fatima Bhutto

‘All That Man Is’, by David Szalay, review by Christopher Tayler for the Financial Times – https://www.ft.com/content/fe2db1c4-f797-11e5-803c-d27c7117d132 

'All That Man Is,' and a Lot He Is Not, in David Szalay's View, by Dwight Garner for The New York Times – https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/books/review-all-that-man-is-and-a-lot-he-is-not-in-david-szalays-view.html 

I Pledge Allegiance, by Karen Olsson for The New York Times – https://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/books/review/Olsson.t.html 

Clip attributions:

David Szalay on Radio 4 Bookclub, 2019

Mohsin Hamid on Radio 4 Bookclub, 2011

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Our books for Ep 5:

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

Memorial by Bryan Washington

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