'The Last White Man' is another brilliant novel by Mohsin Hamid which explores complex and challenging ideas in an original and moving way. Like his 2017 novel ' Exit West', this novel works as a thought experiment: 'Exit West' explored the refugee crisis by asking what would happen if the physical barriers to migration were removed, while 'The Last White Man' ponders race, violence and white fragility by imagining a scenario in which white people's skins turn dark.

Hamid is good at exploring the micro and macro at the same time. This is above all a personal story, about Anders (whose name means 'different' in German) who is one of the first white men to undergo this bewildering transformation; we see how this affects his sense of self and his relationships with his on-off girlfriend Oona, his ailing father, and his colleagues at the gym where he works, as well as Oona's relationship with her conspiracy-theorist mum. However, as these changes become more widespread, Hamid also explores online discourse, vigilante violence, and the disintegration and tentative rebuilding of society.

Much of this novel is deeply disturbing and unsettling, and intended to ask questions to which there are no easy answers about the connection between race and identity. Nobody - least of all Anders himself - seems sure of whether Anders is really the same person after he has changed, and the ease with which he can exist in the world is radically altered by this transformation. At the same time, this is a very tender and poignant novel about love and loss, due to Hamid's foregrounding of Anders and Oona's relationships with themselves and their families - both those whom they have already lost and those for whom they still care. The novel is written in long, trailing compound sentences which some readers may find offputting but which seemed to me to create a haunting, dreamlike and elegiac effect.

This is a short but beautifully written novel, and I was amazed at how much Hamid managed to explore. This is definitely one of the best novels I have read so far this year - thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review!

This is more of a novella than a novel which was good as I didn’t enjoy the story. Not for me I’m afraid.

The Last White Man


Mohsin Hamid’s novel ‘The Last White Man’ is the story of Anders, who wakes up one morning to discover that his skin has turned brown overnight and he can no longer recognise his own reflection. As more and more people begin to change overnight, Anders faces threats of violence and can trust only his friend, Oona, and his father.

This is an odd and interesting book. Firstly, it is very short, easy to read through in a couple of hours. I read over half of the book in one sitting, unsure how I felt about it. Something about it felt a little cold and detached - it opens with Anders and Oona already in a sort of relationship and, without seeing how this originated or what they were like before Anders changes, it’s difficult to feel engaged in how their relationship changes and develops. Outside of Anders and Oona, none of the characters are named (referred to only as Oona’s mother or Anders’s father), and few of them are developed in much detail.

However, the novel really grows on me the more I think about it, and I felt very positively about it by the end. Despite its short length, it is densely packed with ideas and Hamid touches on themes of family, love, homosexuality, addiction, suicide, acceptance, and, of course, race. As people begin to change, so too do their attitudes and the way they treat one another - Anders becomes more curious, wondering about the backgrounds and interests of people he had previously dismissed, now looking to befriend them.

Hamid’s writing style is unusual and interesting (and likely to be divisive!). The novel is written in long, sprawling sentences that can feel at times both frenzied and mundane. I found that the language flowed well and that this style helped get into the mind of Anders and Oona - the long, breathless sentences mimicking their thought patterns - but I think this will feel unnatural and a bit of a turn-off for some people.

Overall, while I do still think that more time spent seeing Anders and Oona interact with one another (and also learning more about them as individuals) would be beneficial, as well as exploring more of the peripheral characters and the wider world, the novel touches on so many interesting ideas and gives them surprising depth in limited space, and I do think that this is a novel that I will revisit in the future. While it could easily be read through in one sitting, I’m not sure it would benefit this approach - when I do go back to it, I think I’d get more from it by reading it slowly and giving myself time to consider the themes in more detail.

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin for the e-ARC!

Anders’s transformation from white skin to dark is reminiscent of Kafka’s Metamorphosis and this is a novel about racism and families and love and change. It’s unusual in style and subject matter and the style can be difficult at times as the sentences are extremely long with only commas in them. It’s quite poetic and moving as well. There’s little in the way of plot and it’s a very short book but it is thought- provoking and I quite liked it.
Thanks to Penguin and Netgalley for an advance copy in return for an honest review.

This is a clever novella about the "great replacement" theory - one by one, white people turn brown, completely transform physically, and disappear little by little. I found the concept smart, the inspiration from Kafka's "Metamorphosis" was very apparent and well done. I disliked the writing at times - many long sentences, at times too flowery; and I found the telling, snippets of lives as the characters, Oona and Anders, navigate "the new normal" and the chaos that ensues, sometimes unsatisfactory.

I loved the authors last book I read Exit West which was on the Booker Prize lists and was very exited to see this one on NetGalley
The idea for the story was instantly appealing with people around the world waking up and finding their bodies which had previously been Caucasian were now black
There is no explanation given to why this has happened and I didn’t mind this as it’s quite often not explained in sci do style novels of this style
I found the authors prose style initially quite difficult to settle into reading as it is written in a stream of conscience spoken word style with very long sentences mimicking the way people naturally speak .I do not recall this from Exit west
I was somewhat disappointed in the superficial nature of the novel which is quite short and I felt didn’t fully show the challenges faced by the characters .I was also not
Invested very deeply into what happens next .I found it hard to put myself in their shoes in the way that I wanted to and ultimately didn’t really enjoy the book
I read an early copy on NetGalley Uk the book is published by Penguin general Uk on 11th August 2022

* I was provided with a free ebook copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thank you to to the NetGalley, the author and the publisher.

Let me start this review by saying that Mohsin Hamid is my favourite author. But despite that, I don't necessarily enjoy all of his books. Exit West and The Reluctant Fundamentalist were two of my all-time favourites but his other books fell flat for me. So I was a little nervous to read this. But thankfully, I was enraptured by it and thought it was a marvellous book.

In this book, we follow a world in which the white people all begin to turn brown. And as this slowly happens across the country, we are exposed to how the population handles it through the eyes of Anders and Oona. Anders is a young man who is one of the first men to change, and Oona is his friend/lover. I think Mohsin Hamid has used this fictional/magical setting to provide social commentary on how white people view whiteness as something that needs to be conserved and protected.

This book is very well written, though it includes a lot of very long, rambling sentences. I get that it may not be for everyone, but I personally love that style of writing. It was a brilliant read and I would strongly recommend it.

One note to the publishers however, the layout of this arc on Kindle was very poor and the text was broken up by lots of numbers which made it very difficult to read.

In the very beginning I thought I wasn’t going to be able to finish this. It seemed too spare and almost robotic; I couldn’t feel the characters at all.
But then the second person turned dark and I realised this was going to be more than a reworking of Metamorphosis. I finished it an hour later and was profoundly moved.
The humanity in Hamid’s writing sneaks up on you. I found myself wishing this book was longer, but of course it didn’t need to be. It says everything it needs to.

Anders wakes up in the morning and finds that he has changed. His skin, which was white, is brown. He's disconcerted; he feels like he's no longer the Anders he was. He hides away for a few days, and when he does go out he wears a hoodie and long sleeves, and people don't recognise him. Both white and dark people seem to respond to him differently - he has a completely new place in society.
But it's just the start. More white people wake up dark-skinned. There are riots; the shelves are bare. Society readjusts, as eventually, everyone changes.
We see this happen mostly through the stories and reactions of Anders, his lover Oona, his father and her mother - four differing viewpoints and experiences.
It sounds like a 'concept novel', heavily driven by premise, and it is, but it's also a beautifully written and skilfully drawn character portrayal. It's thought-provoking, but also tender. The sentences are long, and breathless, but beautifully crafted, and contribute to the general feeling of being swept along by events, out of control.
The ending was not what I would have expected, but actually made perfect sense. I finished the book feeling challenged and thoughtful, but also entertained and uplifted. I think it's very good.
#NetGalley #TheLastWhiteMan

I read this short novel in one breathless sitting. I have been a fan of Moshin Hamid since the publication of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and each of his works since that great work, have been never less than great. This one continues that streak.

Its hard when starting this book not to think of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, and like that book, Hamid uses the metamorphosis of his characters to discuss important issues that dominate and underline much of society's greatest issues. With such a work there is always the danger that it can become dogmatic or worse, dull, but Hamid deftly avoids these pitfalls and has created here a novel of great depth and heart. He does this by focusing on two characters, Anders and Oona, and their love for each other and their extended family. You are drawn close to them, see the changes in the external world refracted through their eyes, and in the end, if you're lucky, might even see your own perspective subtly shifted. A great novel.

A Metamorphosis for modern times - white people’s skin turns brown overnight. Short but thought provoking novel.

There's lots to think about and discuss in this book and I feel that this did get in the way of the story at some points.
The idea of people slowly changing colour and the impact this has on them and society is worth exploring and there is a lot of great discussion to be had after reading this book but I am not so sure that it is a great read without the discussions.

This might be a short novel but it certainly gives you plenty to think about.

Anders walk up one morning and find that his skin has turned brown which makes you think about Kafka's novel when a man wakes to find that he has turned into an insect. Anders finds that it is not just his skin that had changed colour, but that his appearance has changed. He doesn't recognise himself in the mirror. Oona, the close friend he calls, she does not recognise him when she visits. They find that rather than this being an isolated case, gradually, the whole town is slowly changing colour.

It is through Anders and Oona that the author makes his point about oppression and racism as they come to terms with what is happening to themselves and observe the effect on the town. How vigilante gangs try to drive out those that have changed. How those that have are now hiding, or even committing suicide. We see racism, intolerance, and violence.

For me the focus is upon the relationship between Anders and Oona and everything else is just a background. If the author wanted to get his message across, and I think he is asking a question about liberty - would we all be freer if everyone was the same colour?, then I think there should have been more of a focus upon the town, rather than just upon these two.

The writing style is sometimes lyrical but there are long paragraphs so it almost feels as if it is a stream of consciousness, except that it is not first person.

This is a short novel and it is easy to read – with lots to think about. But sadly, it was not one of my favourites.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC! I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

This book follows Anders as he navigates his new reality after he experiences the bizarre phenomenon, white people turning brown.

This book reminded me of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis there were so many elements that definitely came to mind. I enjoyed the underlying comment on social issues and thought it was particularly pertinent in this day and age.

As a woman of South Asian descent, this book definitely resonated with me, and I imagine it will with many others. I enjoy Hamid's writing style (although i prefer his other novels!) I would definitely recommend.

A book that’s stays with you once you’ve finished.

A a story of what white people would do if they suddenly became Black. It is a study in overt and covert racism.

A book that should become a part of the teaching syllabus

Moshin Hamid writes books weaving fiction around a strong central theme in such a way that it makes you stop and think about your own values and the wider society around you. The theme in this book is race, more specifically skin colour and the way we react to it.

Anders and Oona are the main characters. One morning Anders wakes up and overnight his skin colour has changed from white to dark skinned. The novel takes us through his reaction, his family, work colleagues and the community around him. It is a study in overt and covert racism.

I don't want to say too much more about the storyline. It's a short book, well written, easy to read but it really makes you think. It would be an ideal bookclub choice as there are so many discussion points - how would it affect your life it it happened to you, what if it happened the other way around, how do attitudes change across generations - are just a few questions that immediately spring to mind.

I loved this book. I think it is an important text and one which could become a GCSE study text in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is a tricky book to review, as it unlike any other, and the usual thoughts and opinions can’t really apply. It centres on two main characters, Anders and Oona and their relationship as it develops through a turbulent time as people in their town begin to change colour from white to dark, Anders being one of the first. The book explores racism, intolerance, violence and attitudes and the way they change as more and more of the population change colour. It is written in an unfamiliar style, where Hamid uses incredibly long sentences and lots of commas, leading to some difficulty for the reader in keeping track of the narrative - it’s almost a stream of consciousness style, but as it is not written in the first person, it is perhaps a little less convincing. My impression of this book is almost dreamlike and somewhat detached from the characters, but perhaps that is what the writer is trying to achieve - it’s certainly thought provoking and strangely compelling as it progresses.

The Last White Man is the latest novel from Mohsin Hamid. I was a huge fan of his The Reluctant Fundamentalist, with its unique narrative voice, and Exit West, a Saramagoesque parable and positive take on economic migration, although less enamoured of How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (with a similarly distinctive narrative voice but less successful).

The Last White Man is, or promises to be, more in the Saramagoesque mould of Exit West, Kafka's Metamorphosis for the age of fearful white majorities who somehow feel they are the oppressed, and worrying that they may, in future, no longer be a majority (as per the plane flown over the recent Man City-Liverpool league game). The story opens:

"One morning Anders, a white man, woke up to find he had turned a deep and undeniable brown. This dawned upon him gradually, and then suddenly, first as a sense as he reached for his phone that the early light was doing something strange to the color of his forearm, subsequently, and with a start, as a momentary conviction that there was somebody else in bed with him, male, darker, but this, terrifying though it was, was surely impossible, and he was reassured that the other moved as he moved, was in fact not a person, not a separate person, but was just him, Anders, causing a wave of relief, for if the idea that someone else was there was only imagined, then of course the notion that he had changed color was a trick too, an optical illusion, or a mental artifact, born in the slippery halfway place between dreams and wakefulness, except that by now he had his phone in his hands and he had reversed the camera, and he saw that the face looking back at him was not his at all."

And it is not just that his skin has darkened, but rather his physical appearance has changed completely, unrecognisable initially to his lover and father, albeit of a similar size, shape and strength and possessed of the same personality. The same person - but seen differently:

"She told him what she thought, flat-out, that he looked like another person, not just another person, but a different kind of person, utterly different, and that anyone who saw him would think the same, and it was hard, but there it was."

Anders initially thinks his is an isolated case but gradually all of the white people in the (unnamed) city experience the same thing.

The author explained the motivation for the novel last year:

"This sense that whiteness itself was worth thinking about from within, and my need to write this novel grew during the aughts, when I lived in London, encountering more of a threatened whiteness during the unease that morphed into Brexit.

I wanted to explore whiteness as honestly and sympathetically but also unsparingly and brutally as possible, as one might explore religiosity here in Pakistan, where there’s been a rise in intolerant discourse. I watch parallels between Muslim-majority societies and white-majority societies, and I participate in an acknowledgment of a sense of loss. I don’t regard whiteness as a monolithic thing. All of my characters are experiencing the loss of whiteness in different ways.

For this handful of characters, whiteness dies as a mutual participatory category."

But for me the novel was rather frustrating against this declared aim, the 'handful of characters' in the quote perhaps key. We see glimpses, 'noises off' almost, of what this change means for the wider society - vigilante white gangs looking to expel those who have changed from their homes, some impacted committing suicide

"Anders’s boss had said he would have killed himself, and the following week a man in town did just that, his story followed by Anders in the local press, or rather online in the regional section of a large publication, the local paper having shut down long ago, this man shooting himself in front of his own house, a shooting heard but not seen by a neighbor, and called in, and assumed to be an act of home defense, the dark body lying there an intruder, shot with his own gun after a struggle, but the homeowner was not present, and was nowhere to be found, and then the wedding ring and the wallet and the phone on the dead man were all tallied up, and the messages that had been sent, and the experts weighed in, and the sum of it all was clear, in other words that a white man had indeed shot a dark man, but also that the dark man and the white man were the same. The mood in town was changing, more rapidly than its complexion."

But the focus is very much on Anders, his lover Oona, and on Anders' dying father and Oona's mother (at first rather on the side of the vigilantes) and their story is rather personal, with their 'loss of whiteness' seemingly something of a side show.

For example Oona, a yoga instructor, is mourning her brother (that I assumed "doing the molly" was some sort dance, and needed Google to inform me otherwise, perhaps explaining why I wasn't too interested in their story):

"Oona remembered doing molly with her brother a few months post their father’s funeral, back when they were in high school, and they had done molly before, and her brother had not been so bad then, he was just one of those kids who liked to dabble in substances, somewhat regularly, and he had not yet found the substances that would hook him, and Oona had thought it might be too soon after their father to do the molly, and for her it had been, she had become miserable, but her brother had not, he had looked joyous, joyous but brittle, his joy both powerful and forced, like Oona’s mother’s was now, and it was possible that her brother’s brittleness that day had to do with his twin sister’s low, with having to manage her, but Oona thought not, she thought her brother had been brittle because he could not fully fool himself, because he was going to break, had already broken, like her mother had broken, and joy like that when you had broken, that kind of sudden, crazy joy, unearned, that was just a mask."

I would have liked to have seen much less of Oona and gym-bunny Anders and rather more of the wider storyline.

One thing I did appreciate was the positive close to the book. At the time of Exit West, Hamid commented that "part of the great political crisis we face in the world today is a failure to imagine plausible desirable futures. We are surrounded by nostalgic visions, violently nostalgic visions" and as with that novel he shows how the ending of white majority is a positive thing, even for those previously in that majority, this from when Oona reflects on the own change, realising that no one is defined only by who they are now:

"Oona did not know where it came from, but a feeling of melancholy touched her then, a sadness at the losing of something, and perhaps it was her attachment to the old Oona she was mourning, to the face she had known and the person she had been, the person she had lived within and appeared as, or if it was not that, then perhaps it was an attachment to certain memories that she had evoked in herself, to memories she presently wondered whether she would continue to evoke, an attachment to a person connected to that person who had been a little girl once, and who had not yet lost her father and her brother, and who had not yet had to struggle to keep from losing her mother, but of course the people she had been previously themselves looked different, they looked different from how she, Oona, had looked only yesterday, she had changed before she had changed, she had changed every decade and every year and every day, and so she thought there was no reason that she must lose her memories, the ones she wished to keep."

3 stars

Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC

In a complex plot like this, Hamid has been highly experimental in his narrative style. The subject matter - contentious as it is with the protagonist, Anders, waking up with darker skin than when he went to bed - Hamid tackles the theme (obviously) of racism and exclusionism, together with violence and, well, human nature. The story is told through a multi-narrative between Anders, and his friend, Oona. When others in the also begin to experience this change-of-skin-colour phenomenon, the questions Hamid asks are all about human reaction, both individually and collectively.

So, as I say, it's complex, this. And what makes it more complicated than complex, is the narrative style, which borders on stream of consciousness. Whether this over-complication is deliberate (surely it can't just be a mistake?) and is meant to somehow narratively convey the tangled issue of the nature and vulnerability of human perception or not, it's a bit tricksy, narratively. Some simplification - in fact, a more recognisable Hamid-style narrative - would, I suggest, have been more effective.

Nevertheless, I haver between 3 and 4 stars here because, personally, I like a bit of experimentation, and novels are all about enjoyment, and I enjoyed it, I enjoyed the uncanniness and the idea behind it, even though those sentences...

Grateful thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

Moshin Hamid has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (from his four previous novels) most recently for “Exit West” – a novel which examined the issue of migration (and particularly a world which aimed to close borders) both conventionally via the story of a tentative relationship, and very unconventionally via the use of a magic realism device which effectively took supposedly uncontrolled migration to its logical extreme by postulating a series of mysterious Narnia-style doors which open between different parts of the world and which permit (at least temporarily) instant migration, and which from there explored less of a dystopian world than a utopian (or at least optimistic one) as people come to terms with the need to adapt to migration.

The book was a short, easy and enjoyable read but one which prompted reflection on its themes. It was one marked by a distinctive style of writing which was at some times very lyrical and other times almost mundane and with a mix of extremely long paragraph or page style sentences mixed with much shorter sections (although even there the use of “.And” to start sentences gave those sections a similar “run-on” quality when read in one’s head. I described the novel as very reminiscent of the writing of José Saramago, and particularly his “Blindness” - a fable type novel exploring the development of a premise of an alternate world, but also set against a gentle love story. In fact I said it was Saramago but with more punctuation.

This Hamid’s latest novel follows very much in the same lines - in this case examining racism as well effectively as the general mixing of races over time.

In this case the magic realism is introduced immediately - in the first line of the book, which is a very conscious echo of Kafka’s Metamorphosis

“One morning Anders, a white man, woke up to find he had turned a deep and undeniable brown”

And from there we have a society where over time, everyone white turns dark, until as per the title there is one man left white (and even that only temporarily).

We experience the story through one couple in a tentative love relationship - Andres (a gym instructor) and Oona, a yoga teacher (both originally white) as well as Ander’s traditional widower father (dying of cancer) and Oona’s conspiracy theorist widowed mother (still mourning her son, Oona’s brother).

The narrative style is for me a natural extrapolation of “Exit West” with far more run-on sentences - in this case with less punctuation and even more like Saramago.

Despite the huge similarities there are two senses in which the book is a reverse of “Exit West”.

The immediate introduction of the fantasy device is I think weaker than its mid-story introduction in “Exit West” as we get little sense of Andre and Oona’s former life or relationship. Instead what we get is a lengthy post script to the scenario, playing out in a society where everyone is brown but concentrating really on Andre and Oona - their relationship and their mourning for their loved ones. The upside of this is that it broadens the scope of the book beyond a didactic parable - as the book becomes a wider exploration of grief and of being truly seen, but the downside is that the book does seem to lose momentum.

And it is also very different to write the book from the viewpoint of white people, rather than the choice of migrants in the previous book.

The novel in its more fable-like element does have some nice initial touches - as Anders reacts violently to his own self (a concept perhaps taken a little too far in an incident in which a gun-toting homeowner confronts and shoots an intruder who is himself).

Oona’s mother was for me the real highlight of the book. Already fiercely proud but defensive of her identity and “kind - the only people who could not call themselves a people in this country, and there were not so many of them left”, her conspiracy theories prove initially founded as she had read rumours of some early changers and after that her paranoia about the erasure of her identity (the culmination for her and those she follows of something they had warned about for many years) as well convinced that some form of backlash will come (a rather brilliant cameo has her feeling a little thrill when she hears an explosion that at last “something was happening, something big, maybe the tide was shifting, maybe the last real heroes had come” only to dissolve in tears when she realises it was thunder.

And another highlight is Andre’s cringy attempts to befriend the already dark cleaner as his previously white-only gym.

Overall I thought this was another excellent, easy to read, enjoyable but thought provoking novel.