For a modern British novel about immigration, Amanda Craig’s Hearts and Minds is actually quite entertaining. Sure, it has the usual preachy nonsense about the alienation inherent in modern city life, but it also has guns and suicide bombers. It is undoubtedly a page turner. But it also falls into an old trap: painting immigrants as helpless in the face of the alienating forces of the city, which envelop their ambition and spit them out as hapless victims. While it purports to be a book about human co-dependence, Hearts and Minds ends up as a testament to inherent human vulnerability.
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