Moth Smoke

Mohsin Hamid · b. 1971 · Pakistan

Why it matters

A fired Lahore banker spirals into drugs, obsession with his best friend's wife, and a murder trial framed as a mock Mughal court case. Hamid's debut, sharp and unsentimental about Pakistan's moneyed class years before The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

At a glance

Rotating first-person narrators, including an unreliable one, complicate an otherwise brisk plot.