Telling Stories Sideways. Resentment and Nostalgic (Be)longings in Mohsin Hamid’s Novels

This article uses three novels by Mohsin Hamid –The Reluctant Fundamentalist(2008), Exit West(2017) and The Last White Man(2022) –to describe how nostalgia is experienced in the contemporary world. In these novels, Hamid uses magical realism to portray nostalgia as a tension between dissatisfaction or resentment with a troubled present, often linked to the economic inequalities of capitalist society, and a longing for the restoration of an oftenidealised past in the future. The misleading appeal of nostalgia, which lures people into a comforting but false attachment to the past, can thus lead to resentment that justifies social discrimination, ethnic or religious violence, or economic exploitation. However, while providing a critical perspective on the restorative aspect of nostalgia, Hamid’s work also explores what Svetlana Boym (2001, 2007) defines as its “reflective”character. This dichotomy allows the reader to see that nostalgia is not only an escape into the past or an attempt to revive it, but can also be an inquiry into how to transform its lament into an elegy of growth and connection.