The Last White Man Hardcover – 29 August 2022

Mohsin Hamid distills the weight of our collective anxieties—about identity, change, power, and belonging—into a quiet, haunting allegory. With sparse, meditative prose, he tells a story that at first feels surreal but quickly reveals itself as unsettlingly familiar. Part magical realism, part dystopian reflection, and wholly allegorical, The Last White Man extends the conversation on identity, belonging, and racialized perception in a world still shaped by the aftershocks of 9/11 (The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Exit West). Yet its quiet boldness and clarity feels chillingly prescient in our post-COVID, post-truth world.The premise is simple: one morning, a white man named Anders wakes up with dark skin. Soon, others do, too. There is no explanation, no science, no cause—just the slow, spreading transformation and of whiteness disappearing. As more people across the town and then the country undergo this unexplained transformation, society begins to fray. Hamid uses this surreal event not to explain how it happens, but to explore what it means. In a way that feels more Aldous Huxley's quiet dystopias than Kafka’s grotesque transformation, Hamid probes into the silent panic and unease of a society losing its most insidious, unremarkable privilege: its whiteness.What does it mean to be visible in a world where invisibility was once your privilege? What happens when the foundation of privilege disappears? What happens when the social order built around that invisibility starts to crumble? What emerges when we’re all made to look the same, and yet still feel different inside? And perhaps most hauntingly—how long before we turn on each other, just to feel visible again?What follows is a deeply moving narrative centered around Anders and Oona—two characters through whom Hamid writes not as an observer, but as if from within. Hamid doesn't gaze into their experience—he writes as though he is them, allowing the reader to inhabit their fear, alienation, and slow, sometimes painful, reconciliation with change. The inner monologues are unhurried, almost meditative. They're raw with self-doubt, internal conflict, and the struggle to accept the loss of an old identity while unsure of the new one taking shape. Their confusion, fear, alienation, and self-doubt feel lived, not reported.There is also a larger allegorical undertone: in a world where sameness was invisible, difference makes one visible. The sudden transformation of skin color becomes a metaphor for the rude awakening from social complacency—a visual rupture that forces both individual and collective reckoning. This parallels how so many of us only “wake up” to systemic inequality, racism, or displacement when it touches us directly. The transformation is less about race alone and more about the fragility of perceived selfhood, and the violence that can follow when that perception is disrupted.Then is the element of self-censorship and bodily dissonance. Anders, once transformed, instinctively avoids people he once knew—choosing silence and invisibility rather than risk misunderstanding or confrontation. Oona’s journey, meanwhile, contains moments of body dysphoria and internalized beauty standards. Once praised for her whiteness and slim figure, she later finds herself experimenting with makeup to darken her skin—an act (of revenge?) she cannot fully explain. This moment evokes not just the socially constructed nature of race, but also the anxiety of identity performance and the subconscious response to shifting norms. Oona’s experimentation with dark make-up, reminded me of Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) and the broader colonial legacy of caricaturing darkness, yet subverted and unsettled by the ambiguity of Oona’s own motivations.The novel also weaves in a subtext of queerness and "coming out", visible in the way both Anders and Oona must navigate the reactions of their parents to their 'turning'. Anders’ father and Oona’s mother are quietly unsettled by the transformation, and Oona’s mother even more so by their now “mixed” relationship. Yet, despite these hesitations, both parents show a complex kind of love—one that is strained, but present. For Andres and Oona themselves, it is only after Anders changes that their bond deepens, as though losing the illusion of sameness forced a confrontation with the deeper truths of self and connection (Love is Blind, anyone?) There is something powerful in this: that it is not ideology but intimacy, not conformity but care, that becomes the path through collapse.Hamid does not shy away from depicting racism, internalized and overt. Oona’s mother clings to a vision of the past, holding onto hope that whiteness will be restored—that someone will “save” them. Her reaction also mirrors contemporary “Great Replacement” conspiracies, echoing real-world anxieties about racial purity, demographic shifts, and loss of power. There is a sense of desperate nostalgia, not just for whiteness, but for the world it promised. And there’s also the unsettling suggestion that for some, change is harder than death.As society collapses around them, the novel quiets. Although not situated anywhere specific in time and place, as the novel progresses (changing from autumn to winter to spring) the global implications of the ‘turning’ retreat into the background, and the story homes in on the personal, the relational, the intimate. What began as a tale of a world unraveling becomes, by the second half, a tender exploration of how two people find each other—and themselves—in the rubble. The transformation of skin, once an aberration, becomes an equalizer. Race dissolves, but the echoes remain in memory, preserved for future generations not as something to reclaim, but to understand.In this way, the novel functions on three interwoven levels:1. As a metaphor for a minority elite’s inevitable loss of power in an evolving society.2. As an allegory for migration and assimilation, with all the pain, resistance, and generational dissonance it brings.3. As a deeply personal story of two people, navigating internal change and finding connection amid societal disintegration.There are modern resonances throughout—from the rise of misinformation and militias to the way people, cloistered in their homes, watch chaos unfold like the Black Mirror episode “White Bear.” And yet, Hamid eventually resists cynicism, choosing hope and optimism. The novel’s power lies in its restraint. It does not shout. It does not peak. It sits with discomfort. It leaves questions unanswered. And in that ambiguity, it becomes not just a warning—but a mirror.

Very poor as compared to previous books by Hamid. Not worth it

(Voluntarily reviewed a physical copy of the book on For The Love of Fictional Worlds)•Okay; this is my first book by Mohsin Hamid - yes, I haven’t read Exist West, his most recent foray into the Booker Prize.•But when I read the blurb of his newest novel, The Last White Man, I just couldn’t resist - a world where white men are slowly turning brown skinned without any specific rhyme and reason and racist vigilante scouting the roads to hunt people; and where frequent outages and gunfires don’t faze the citizens.•The Last White Man follows Anders, the first white man to turn brown and his girlfriend, Oona.As far as Anders knows, he is the first white man to change skin colors and he doesn’t know why.•With each and every incident, the author does his best to turn the tables; to make the reader understand the absurdity of actually thinking the color of one’s skin matters.•But even with all the relevance of racism and discrimination in today’s times - was there a point to the whole novel? I don’t know? Because I certainly couldn’t summarise it 🫣•Still this was a novel I did enjoy reading; even if it hadn’t been what I had been expecting in some terms and unexpected in others.

White population of a nameless town start turning dark. One by one. Without pattern. Not triggering any pain. A complete and quite baffling transformation that happens overnight. It doesn't matter what exact color they're now. They're just.. not white anymore. From all across the land, similar news keep surfacing. Is it a disease? Is something weirdly supernatural happening somewhere? Nobody knows the answer.This story is not about the 'why's of the change. It's about the trauma that follows, the denial that's inevitable at the beginning and the reluctant acceptance that comes in the end.It's about the fear and chaos that chokes the society. Neighbours, friends and families don't recognise each other anymore. Even if they do, they can't trust each other like before.It's about the factions the world finds itself unwillingly divided into. More accurately, the factions that suddenly become more pronounced in the face of an enormous change.The Last White Man is also about the immense capacity of people to move forward, to love and to forgive, transcending slowly the discontent, prejudice and sorrow.In this book, Mohsin Hamid pushed the boundaries of the supposed genre it falls into. Although the elements of magic realism are evident from the beginning, it reads and feels like a thought experiment. He studied intimately how the characters act when their whiteness is stripped from them. Their racism, their bigotry and discrimination everything was analysed within an inch. When the distrust grew between different groups of people, then too, his remarks were dead on.On top of being a social comentary, The Last White Man is also a story of healing. It oozes with vivacity of life - a cautious eagerness to go back to the normalcy, even if the very definition of 'normal' is changed for so many. Anders and Oona among them.Once you read the book, it's easy to understand why it could be objectionable to so many. But if you aren't a white supremacist you're probably good to go! I also loved the writing style of the story. Inside this book each line is a passage. Some passages extending beyond a single page. I am not a big fan of such narratives. But somehow it worked! The book is quite short. It doesn't even take up 200 pages from beginning to end. And the entire story is kind of a nail-biter. So it didn't take me much time to finish it at all.In conclusion, I'll only say that, The Last White Man is a beautiful story. Not quite a fantasy, not just a literary fiction either, it deserves a special place and high praises for its bold stance if nothing else. It's a book that should be read by all even if tolerance these days towards differing opinions has become something that's hard to come by.5/5 and highly recommended.