Matters are further complicated by our discovery—very late in the novel—that the garden has indeed been influenced by the Islamic gardens of the East. Its lines recall the description we are given of Babur Gardens, a park built for the first Mughal emperor, which Mo stumbled across on a post-9/11 visit to Kabul. Tim Gauthier suggests that this late revelation might encourage in the reader misgivings about Mo, a character with whom we have developed an intimate relationship courtesy of the omniscient third-person technique that is free to swoop down into the consciousnesses of the main characters in turn. In fact, we are never really in much doubt about Mo's intentions, which are benevolent but perhaps complacent and colored by personal ambition.

QUESTION: How does the late revelation of the Babur Gardens influence shift reader sympathy toward Mo? Worth exploring whether the narrative deliberately withholds this to complicate judgment.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 282