The story of the book is unoriginal. It's the usual theme of poor-to-rich. Maybe a bit of tragedy here, and a little more love story here, but it's still the same.
The genius of this book does not catch on within the narrative. It is the way it's written. Masterfully Mohsin Hamid immerses you into the world of a nameless immerses protagonist, referred to as "you" by the second-person narrator.
Through this style, and increasingly making his way into your mind by indifferently confronting you with deep, impossible to ignore, thoughts. The pull of those mind games is overwhelming, and in the end, you find yourself entirely disarmed, a grown human with tears all over the face.
"[...] when you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create. It's in being read that a book becomes a book [...]"
"How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" constantly ponders its purpose of being a self-help book. Whether or not you expect specific advice in such a book, it contains little to no guidance.
What it does is to paint life in your mind — a life, probably unimaginable to you, and yet vividly happening inside your head. Nonchalantly, almost indifferently, Mohsin Hamid tells casual tragedy and happiness, not attributing more or less significance to it than time itself.
And so, in your head, which may or may not be as real as reality, you witness the death of family members. You see true and false, though still very real love. Fascinated, you observe the casualties of extreme poverty and an overstressed infrastructure. Corruption, systemic flaws, and the clash of world views, mesmerizes, shocks you.
Life, with all its constructs and bonds, is fragile. It happens to you, no matter how much you try to alter it with your actions. With the unstoppable force that is time, we all rush towards our inevitable end.
Maybe it is, after all, a self-help book.
