Mohsin Hamid's The Last White Man, first published in 2022, is a speculative fiction novel about each member of a majority-white society spontaneously developing brown skin.
Set in an unnamed English-speaking country that has similarities to Scandinavian countries, the novel depicts a white man named Anders being among the first people in his town to inexplicably develop a dark complexion overnight. As more and more pale people turn "brown" or "dark," conspiracy theories proliferate about a plot to replace light-skinned people. Violence erupts on the streets and white militant groups start running "changed" people out of town. In response to riots, most businesses close over the winter, driving Anders to take refuge with his dying father. Meanwhile, Anders's lover, Oona, takes care of her conspiracy-minded mother. By spring, most people in the country have changed color, including the racist militants, and it becomes safe to go outside again. Oscillating between grief and optimism, people in the society get on with their lives and rebuild the infrastructure that was damaged over the winter. At Anders's father's well-attended open-casket funeral, Anders's father is the only pale face in the room—the last white man in town. The novel ends with Anders and Oona moving into Anders's childhood home and raising a daughter there.
Exploring themes of privilege, racial prejudice, mortality, grief, and the absurdity of the social construction of race, The Last White Man depicts a society struggling through paranoia and upheaval on its way to enlightenment. Hamid has said the novel was inspired by his own experience of losing his "partial" whiteness as a highly educated brown man when 9/11 brought about new levels of racial profiling.
