Beneath the skin of our obsession with whiteness lie deeper fears about our place in the world | Kenan Malik

Anti-racists fear racism will never be conquered, while racists still nurse a sense of loss and pride

It is Viktor Orban's worst nightmare: One morning Anders, a white man, woke up to find he had turned a deep and undeniable brown." It is the opening line to Mohsin Hamid's new novel The Last White Man, a line that deliberately echoes the opening to Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis.

Ever since he first bedazzled with his 2000 novel Moth Smoke, Hamid has shown himself willing and capable of tackling big, divisive subjects: the war on terror, immigration, identity, corruption, poverty. With his latest novel, he attempts to engage with another biggie: whiteness".

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