The last white woman, Liz Truss

Liz Truss. Photo: UK Government Open Government Licence v3.0

Writer Mohsin Hamid was on British domestic radio's Today programme, talking about his new novel ‘The Last White Man’ (published Thursday, August 11) and it seemed ironic neither he, nor his BBC interlocutor Mishal Husain, said anything about the last white woman standing in the Conservative leadership election.

Ironic because so much was left unsaid.

Both interviewee and interviewer spoke about the perspective-altering reality of Mr Hamid’s novel. The protagonist, Anders, wakes up to discover that he has changed race and become a dark man and then everyone in the world changes race too, until there’s just one white man left.

What that means, Mr Hamid indicated in his radio interview with Ms Husain, is a world stripped of racial bias, one in which we don’t any longer know how “to sort” ourselves. If we're all one colour, we can't automatically elevate ourselves by referencing racial distinctions.

It's an interesting premise, some…