Mohsin Hamid speaks at St Andrews University
‘Hundreds came, crowding out the theatre’
Jonathan Taylor, the Chair of the Booker Prize Foundation, and I are in St Andrews today.
We're here because of a new initiative between the university and the Foundation. All freshers coming to St Andrews this autumn have been sent a copy of Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007.
Mohsin this evening gave a talk - The Man Booker Lecture. None of us knew how many students might turn up. In the event hundreds came, crowding out the theatre, taking every centimetre of space, sitting in the aisles, standing at the back.
As Louise Richardson, St Andrews' new principal commented, ‘So who says young people of 18 don't read literary fiction?'
Mohsin spoke for forty minutes after which he answered a host of questions and signed books for a queue of students that snaked round the block.
Good for St Andrews. Good for fiction. A result!
Report from Dotti Irving, part of the Man Booker Prize administration team.
