“I never want to do a book twice so each time when I try to write differently, I don’t know what I am doing and I struggle for years,” explains Hamid. Like his other novels, Hamid uses a different narrative voice and writes How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia in second person. “The more I thought about it, the more I explored the idea. “We joked about how hard writing literary fiction can be and I told him that my next novel will be about self-help,” says Hamid. The idea for the book dawned on Hamid when he was at a party in New York with a friend, an editor at a literary magazine, as they laughed about the difficulties of literature. “It’s an environment in which everyone is obsessed with money.” There is a lot of insecurity, so there is this brutal upward and out sentiment,” explains Hamid. “I don’t think there is more of a drive to get rich in South Asia as there is for quicker change.

Each chapter follows a phase in his life and the character is seen as a vehicle for the reader who learns about how to get rich. The story follows the template of the life of a young boy from rural poverty to considerable wealth and then to death. “I did not want to use brand names because I wanted the reader to be free to come up with their own perceptions of it.” “The story is about a place that may very well be like Lahore, but it will never say so,” said Hamid at Karachi Literature Festival earlier this month, where the unofficial launch of the book took place. Hamid says that while the book itself does not specify who or where the character is, he wants readers to have their own interpretation.

The book, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, which is all set to be launched in March, is about 70 years in a man’s life - a story that anyone can relate to. Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid says his new book is about “you”, the reader.

How to get filthy rich in asia