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"Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard; I am a lover of America."

So begins the 192-page monologue of Changez, a Pakistani man who spends almost the entire novel at a cafe in Lahore, Pakistan, talking to a mysterious American who may be armed and who sends messages on a satellite phone. The American's few remarks, like all the novel's events, come to us filtered through Changez.

As the two men drink tea and share dinner, Changez tells of his time in America. Son of a once-prosperous family, he enjoyed a full scholarship at Princeton, graduated with high honors and was hired as an analyst by a prestigious New York City valuation firm. At 22, he is "a young New Yorker with the city at my feet."

But Changez's swift rise can't mask his misgivings about the country he claims to love. His privileged classmates, he notes, "conduct themselves in the world as though they were its ruling class." Later, awed by the imperial views from his 42nd-floor office, he thinks of the lost grandeur of Pakistan's distant past and the shabbiness of its cities today.

Two events bring Changez's American idyll to an end. On a business trip to Manila, he watches the Twin Towers fall, and, to his surprise, finds himself "pleased at the slaughter of thousands of innocents." It's a testament to author Mohsin Hamid's skill that Changez, despite this cold-blooded admission, remains a partly sympathetic character.

That's largely because of Changez's relationship with a strange, ethereal Princeton grad named Erica, which reveals the depth of his loneliness and makes The Reluctant Fundamentalist as much a story of thwarted love as an anti-U.S. polemic. In Erica's eyes he sees "something broken" even before she tells him of Chris, a lover who died the year before. This perfect soul mate seems to have taken with him her desire to live; her only passionate moments with Changez come when they pretend he is the dead boyfriend.

The love story and the polemic converge after the United States invades Afghanistan, sending Changez into a rage. In his view, America, like Erica, is lost in a powerful and deadly nostalgia, what with all that old World War II talk about honor and duty and such. (Assignment for symbol-hunters: Does Erica stand for America? Discuss.)

Changez finally flees this spoiled paradise, vowing that "such an America had to be stopped." Returning to Pakistan, he takes a job teaching in a university torn by anti-American demonstrations. After harshly condemning the United States on television, he feels "like a Kurtz awaiting his Marlowe." Then he meets the mysterious American.

Is Changez really "a lover of America" as well as a lover who was hurt in America? Everything we know comes to us through his voice, by turns emotionally raw, teasingly ambiguous, fawning and tinged with menace. We read on to see what he will reveal, increasingly certain that he will also conceal.

Chris Tucker is a Dallas writer and commentator for KERA-FM (90.1) National Public Radio.

Mohsin Hamid

(Harcourt, $22)

Mohsin Hamid will discuss and sign The Reluctant Fundamentalist at 7 p.m. Monday at Barnes & Noble, 7700 W. Northwest Highway.

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