AS soon as we see the cover picture of a man in Pakistani clothes we think we know what this is about.

We're wrong. This was shortlisted for the Booker and it's easy to see why.

It is short and deceptively simple. At a Lahore café one evening, a young Pakistani talks to an American.

Apart from a few reported snippets, we hear only one side of the conversation. The conversation is directed at the reader, which you find either extremely irritating or utterly brilliant.

Gradually you learn that the Pakistani, Changez, had been one of America's elite, studying at Princeton. He gets a coveted traineeship with the country's top management consultants and turns out to be one of their best trainees, destined for great success and wealth, a master of western capitalism.

The firm's proud motto is "Focus on the Fundamentals", which generally means focusing on the books, the money, the bottom line, with little regard for the human cost and consequences involved. There is, we realise, more than one sort of fundamentalist.

Changez falls in love with an American girl, Erica, but can make love to her only if he and she pretend he is someone else. Erica becomes ill, fades away and vanishes. Well yes, the symbolism gets a mite clunky at times.

After 9/11 Changez rethinks his idea of the US and of his homeland and India, grows a beard, stops trying to be American. He returns to Pakistan and his family, becomes a lecturer and encourages anti-American feeling in his students.

The conversation ends, he walks his companion back to his hotel. There is the furtive follower, a glint of metal.

And still the ending is ambiguous. Very simple, very disturbing.