How does The Reluctant Fundamentalist address key ideas?

One way that Hamid's novel addresses key ideas is by incorporating the reader into the narrative.

One of the key ideas in The Reluctant Fundamentalistis its discussion of terrorism.  The question of Changez's identity haunts the novel's ending. It is not clear if Changez is a terrorist or what the resolution is between he and the American.  Hamid does not give a direct answer.  Rather, he allows the reader's imagination to guide how this...

One way that Hamid's novel addresses key ideas is by incorporating the reader into the narrative.

One of the key ideas in The Reluctant Fundamentalist is its discussion of terrorism.  The question of Changez's identity haunts the novel's ending. It is not clear if Changez is a terrorist or what the resolution is between he and the American.  Hamid does not give a direct answer.  Rather, he allows the reader's imagination to guide how this key issue is resolved:

The form of the novel, with the narrator and his audience both acting as characters, allowed me to mirror the mutual suspicion with which America and Pakistan (or the Muslim world) look at one another. The Pakistani narrator wonders: Is this just a normal guy or is he a killer out to get me? The American man who is his audience wonders the same. And this allows the novel to inhabit the interior emotional world much like the exterior political world in which it will be read. The form of the novel is an invitation to the reader. If the reader accepts, then he or she will be called upon to judge the novel’s outcome and shape its ending.

In allowing an "invitation to the reader," Hamid addresses a key issue in the novel.  

Hamid accepts that the world after September 11 has infected everyone with a certain set of biases with which they view the world.  Before we can figure out the form of this world, we have to be honest about our preconceptions that guide our understanding of the world.  Changez has his constructions, America has its own, the American possesses his own, and the reader contains their own sets of prejudices.  In addressing it in this way, Hamid suggests our own understanding helps to "shape" our view of the world.  In this setting, there is no absolute truth.  Rather, truth can only be understood through our own perception.  Incorporating the reader into this issue enables the reader to "judge the novel's outcome" for themselves.