One hand clapping: Unusual narrative voice in The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, timely reading in light of recent events though the narrator is novel like those Boston idiots, or so it seems so far, cultured and educated, outgoing but introspective - so we will have to see what turns his life has taken, as hinted broadly in the title. The narrator is a Pakistan-born Princeton graduate who had at least for a time great success on Wall Street and now is back in home city of Lahore - he stoppeth an American and offers to guide him to the best tea shop around - it's perhaps surprising that the American would accompany a stranger and not feel drawn into a trap, but the narrator speaks perfect English and seems to be just a good-faith ambassador for his country - seems so, anyway. The novel has a very unusual narrative structure: it's entirely a tale told by the narrator to you, the reader, but more specifically addressed the young American man he encounters - we learn at least a little about the listener through things the narrator says, though the entire voice of the novel is the narrator's. Interestingly, it is clear from his comments that the listener also speaks - but we hear only one side of their novel-length conversation - something like the narrative strategy in Yehoshuah's great Mr. Mani. The novel is well paced, the narrator's character is complex and intriguing - especially as we are trying to learn who he is and where and how his views about American life have evolved, and perhaps turned him into a the eponymous fundamentalist, or perhaps a terrorist - his personality reminds me a little of the narrator of O'Neill's great novel Netherland: a foreigner who came to the U.S. and made a fortune but can never separate from his past, his ancestry (the two are very different but share that trait) - and who always feel a bit of a social outcast, despite success and recognition. It seems that both novels may be about terrorism, but as experienced from different sides - yet both narrators share a deep sense of loneliness and alienation.