I would argue that this insight encapsulates The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s concerns and the mode of their inscription: what the story tells, to whom, and how it is told. In other words, the novel enacts a “return of the author” as what Gupta calls an “explanatory construct, as a subject in whom intellectual property is vested, as an implicit biographical subject or historical reference point.” The novel can be seen to have a double author: Mohsin Hamid the historical personage—author and authority on Pakistan—and Changez the knowing, manipulative author of the narrative we are given to read.

DEFINE: Introduces Gupta's concept of "return of the author" as an explanatory construct, biographical subject, and historical reference point applied to the novel's dual authorship.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 464