Tuesday, October 23, 2018 A Familiar Stranger: Mohsin Hamid BABEL 2018

Arriving in Buffalo, Hamid said, felt in a way like coming home. Upon taking the stage he made note of the parallels between Buffalo and his native Lahore, cities whose best days are thought to be behind them and yet suddenly seem to have more to look forward to than others proclaimed. From the beginning, Hamid established himself as a “familiar stranger”, and the rest of his talk he spent telling that we all share that identity. For almost two hours, Hamid engaged the audience with anecdotes of his own personal history, the rationale behind the use of portals in his novel, the portals we use in real life, and the commitment to the use of imagination in adult life.