Beyond economic globalization in Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia: The false promise of self-help and possibilities through reading with a creative mind

Abstract

This article argues that Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia functions as a strategic parody of a self-help book that comments on economic globalization's failures and in turn illustrates the violence that it produces. Although globalization is detrimental to individuals and relatively inescapable within the world of Hamid's text, opportunities for reading creatively can counter its detriments. Hence, creative ways of reading provide alternatives to buying into the globalized and ever-globalizing capitalist system -alternatives that Hamid suggests his readers should embrace.