Harsh spotlight: Pakistanis after 9/11

Naqvi's novel trails the lives of Pakistani students and immigrants who were increasingly in the spotlight after 9/11. -Photo by Reuters

NEW YORK: In the first days after 9/11, many immigrants found themselves in a harsh new spotlight, with a little extra wattage reserved for Pakistanis and other Muslims.

That glare is where H.M. Naqvi has set ‘Home Boy,’ his tale of a high-achieving but directionless literature major a year out of New York University. But Shehzad, the only child of a secular Muslim family in Karachi, doesn't seem to notice that his adopted city and his world have changed forever. He has been laid off from his Wall Street job and is doggedly pursuing Manhattan's nightclub scene.

Shehzad and his two friends — one who DJs at tony private parties and the other a Ph.D who teaches high school — make no apologies, once they've checked in with their buddies and compared notes. They're more concerned with sex and drugs and finding a friend who seems to have dropped out of sight.

This self-absorption can be annoying, especially in prose slathered with literary flourishes and local minutiae. But the terrorist attacks eventually collide with the trio, and the friends emerge bigger and more interesting from this fast-paced and evocative coming-of-age tale.

‘Home Boy’ recalls other stories of disillusioned young men marooned in Manhattan with their own inadequacies and badly in need of maturing. Mostly, the parallels are refreshing: How often do American fiction readers get to glimpse their culture's ironies and shortcomings reflected in a contemporary immigrant clan?

Naqvi, a native of Pakistan who finished high school in the United States and has taught at Boston University, now divides his time between the US and Pakistan. – AP Link...