Arrived at the Buchanan Theatre this evening for Mohsin Hamid's lecture to find it absolutely packed - the aisles were littered with bodies and people were congregating in the doorways straining to hear. However, I was able to have a brief chat beforehand with Mohsin and then wangle a space to hear a thoughtful reflection on the craft of writing The Reluctant Fundamentalist  ("The job of the novelist is to re-complicate the over-simplified," he said).

To that end he pointed out the main character Changez is polite, Westernised, not observably religious yet his immediate reaction on hearing of the attack on the Twin towers is a smiling satisfaction. We have by that time been drawn into a certain empathy with Changez- not least because we see how affected he has been by his doomed relationship with his girlfriend - which makes the prospect of his capacity for cold blooded action all the more troubling.

But the ending is ambiguous: do we imagine what may happen only because of what we fear 'radical Muslims' are capable of post 9/11?