Moth Smoke

By: Mohsin Hamid

Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid

The debut novel from the internationally bestselling author of Exit West and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

In contemporary Pakistan, Daru Shezad is fired from his banking job in Lahore and thus begins a decline that plummets him into a dangerous world of drugs and crime. Fast-paced and unexpected, Moth Smoke portrays a Pakistan far more vivid and complex than the exoticized images of South Asia that are oft protrayed in the West.

This complex story established Mohsin Hamid as an internationally important writer of substance and imagination and the premier Pakistani author of our time, a promise he has amply fulfilled with each successive book. This debut novel, meanwhile, remains as compelling and deeply relevant to the moment as when it appeared more than a decade ago.

Critic reviews

"A first novel of remarkable wit, poise, profundity, and strangeness… Hamid is a writer of gorgeous, lush prose and superb dialogue… Moth Smoke is a treat." —Esquire

"Stunning… [Hamid] has created a hip page-turner about [his] mysterious country." —Los Angeles Times

"A brisk, absorbing novel… inventive… trenchant… Hamid steers us from start to finish with assurance and care." —Jhumpa Lahiri, The New York Times Book Review

"Pakistan, seventh most populous country in the world, is one of the countries whose literature has been overlooked. Now its chair has been taken, and looks to be occupied for years to come, by the extraordinary new novelist Mohsin Hamid." —The Philadelphia Inquirer

"A subtly audacious work and prodigious descendant of hard-boiled lit and film noir… Moth Smoke is a steamy and often darkly amusing book about sex, drugs, and class warfare in postcolonial Asia." —The Village Voice

"Fast-paced, intelligent." —The New Yorker

"Friends, a love triangle, murder, criminal justice, hopelessness, humidity. It’s set in Lahore, there’s a beautiful woman. Her name is Mumtez and she smokes pot and cigarettes and drinks straight Scotch. Read this book. Fall in love." —Publishers Weekly

"The most impressive of his gifts is the clearsightedness of his look at the power structure of a society that has shifted from the old feudalism, based on birth, to the new Pakistani feudalism based on wealth." —The New York Review of Books

"Sharply observed… elegant and evocative… a substantial achievement." —Financial Times

"Brilliant… As relevant now as it was upon first publication twelve years ago." —The Millions

Innovative in style and substance

There is no other author I'd rather read right now than Hamid. Having absolutely loved his recent works, Exit West and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, I eagerly sought out this early novel, which my library was unable to obtain. Moth Smoke was well worth the effort. The emotional impact of Exit West and the innovative voices and structure of How to get Filthy Rich can find their roots in this novel. The story follows Daru, a out-of-work and depressed Pakistani who finds himself a witness to a crime. We follow him as he spirals into an affair and drug use. But the story is much more than Daru's story. It gives us an insight into Lahore and the societal structures there. By jumping perspectives, and even from first, second, and third-person storytelling, Hamid paints a picture of a Lahore ruled by an educated and elite 1% while people like Daru are unable to get ahead. Still, Daru's decisions blaze his own path.
Hamid structures stories like no other. His ability to use second-person structures to insert the reader into the narrative is highly effective here as well as in How to Get Filthy Rich. While he expertly plays with style, he never neglects the emotional impact of his stories. I've left each of his books emotionally impacted. Any of Hamid's novels are a good place to start. Moth Smoke, while not as tightly crafted as his others, showcases the innovative talent of this truly unique author.

Tracing Mohsin Hamid’s Literary Development

This audible book is a way of going back to look at the author’s earliest work. His skilled with setting, including political, historical context, is excellent. The seeds of the Seims and his leader work are also here in this first novel. As a novel, Moth Smoke is only a foreshadowing of what Hamid does with The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and that is what makes it worth reading or listening to: it captures the early struggles of a literary genius who was still unsure of the stories he would narrate, the perspectives on our world he might provide us with…

Tragic, yet justified!

The main character pursues a life that gradually spins more out of control. You love him and hate him at the same time. The story is overall tragic, but yet justified. It's a mix of drama, tragedy, friendship, and romance.