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Mohsin Hamid, Author of the Acclaimed New York Times Bestseller The Reluctant Fundamentalist, to Explore the Intersection Between Pakistan and the Western World in Upcoming New Book

New York, New York, May 13, 2009 ... Geoffrey Kloske, Vice President and Publisher of Riverhead Books, today announced the acquisition of North American rights, including audio, first-serial, eBook and paperback rights, to a new novel by New York Times-bestselling, critically acclaimed, award-winning author Mohsin Hamid.  Tentatively titled Pureland, the book will be set in Pakistan and the West and will explore the unmaking of identity - personal, national, sexual, spiritual - at a moment of global seismic shift.  Rebecca Saletan, Editorial Director of Riverhead Books, will edit Mr. Hamid's new novel, which she acquired from literary agent Jay Mandel of the William Morris Agency.  Hamish Hamilton, a Penguin Group (UK) imprint, which also published Mr. Hamid's last book, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, has acquired UK rights.  A publication date has not yet been set.

Mr. Kloske commented, "I'm very pleased that Riverhead is Mohsin Hamid's new publishing home.  He is an immensely talented writer and continues Riverhead's ongoing tradition of publishing landmark literary works by such award-winning, bestselling authors as Khaled Hosseini, Junot Díaz, and Chang-rae Lee.  Mohsin provides compelling perspectives in a way that will have a lasting impact on readers everywhere."

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Myth #4.  If you put yourself out there, you'll make new friends.

The problem with high school is that everyone already knows everyone else.  Unless you go to one of those huge schools with like four thousand students.  Even then, people will take about two seconds to decide who you are just by how you look.  In most cases, everyone has made judgments about everyone else a long time ago.  These judgments are pretty much carved in stone.  So you're locked into the image of what everyone else thinks you are.  Which seriously blows.

College is monumentally better.  When you first get there, no one knows who you are yet.  There are zero limitations to prevent you from connecting with potential new friends.  You know how sometimes you plan to reinvent yourself over the summer and come back all improved?  But it never seems to work out that way?  Think of college as the ultimate reinvention opportunity.  It's a chance to become the person you've always wanted to be, the person you know you could be if you could just get away from here.  Fresh starts are awesome.  Yours awaits.

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"Oh, right.  You're the breast lady," said the staffer at the fourth floor paging desk of the San Francisco Public Library as I handed him the yellow request slips. 

Breast Lady.  The phrase evoked, for me, a grotesque cartoon bosom mounted atop spindly legs.  When he called my name fifteen minutes later to hand me books unearthed from the catacombs of the library, I felt compelled to explain-not for the first time and perhaps more than a bit primly-that my frequent visits to take notes on noncirculating volumes like A Century of Lingerie, Uplift: the Bra in America, and Support and Seduction: A History of Corsets and Bras were for research.  I was writing a novel in which one of the characters, bra designer Francis Wells, turns part of his house into a bra museum to pay homage to the part of the female anatomy he reveres. 

Despite such occasional mortification, however, I relished conducting research for How To Buy a Love of Reading.  First of all, it allowed me to bring home an immoderate number of volumes from the library.  (I'm the kind of geek who relishes sitting on floor surrounded by stacks of books.)  Secondly, it gave me an excuse-at least for a time-to wallow in information.  In real life, you just don't get much license to wallow in unnecessary details.  In real life, one has to decide rather quickly what is important about a situation.