How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

At the beginning of each chapter, the main character appears as the narrator of the story and the creator of the rules comprising the plan to getting rich. He weighs in as an authority on amassing wealth, writing and reading stories, having contingency plans, debt management, the usefulness of glad-handing to cut through red tape, and more. When he switches to the narrative format of the book, he uses examples from his life to illustrate the principles he is teaching. However, at these points, he asks the reader to become him and switches to present tense, referring to himself as “you.” In this way, the reader—who is ostensibly following the rules on the path to riches—can step into his shoes and experience the same events as the narrator as he puts his plan for success into practice.

After being raised in a poor village, the narrator becomes a skilled salesman of expired food, then a water bottling entrepreneur, and finally, a truly wealthy water magnate. During the book, he dabbles in fundamentalism, becomes infatuated with the pretty girl, marries, fathers a son, and loses his wife. His mother dies when he is young and his father never recovers from the loss, putting the narrator in the position of supporting his father emotionally. The other business-minded characters in the book—with the exception of the pretty girl—are ruthless in their business calculations. They are willing to lie, repackage expired food, and even to commit murder. The narrator never resorts to criminal means.

He spends his last few years with the pretty girl, and they are the happiest times of his life. When he dies, he realizes that he has not followed his third rule—he went and fell in love—and admits that he has not written a perfect guide to becoming rich in rising Asia. At the moment of his death, he is more peaceful and content than at any other time shown in the book. 

The pretty girl’s name is never given, making her both a character and a symbol, given that she is never referred to without the adjective of “pretty.” At the beginning of the novel, she is working in a beauty salon. She dreams of becoming a model and begins working for a marketing director who promises to get her a shampoo ad in exchange for sexual favors. She will go on to become a moderately successful model, appearing in ads for jeans. When her modeling career begins to ebb, she attempts to transition into acting, but lands only minor parts. She eventually finds success as the host of a popular cooking show. When the show ends, she opens a home-furnishing boutique and becomes friends with her assistant. At various times, she reenters the narrator’s life. Sometimes they merely talk on the phone, and twice they have sex.

The pretty girl finds the idea of being tied to a man repellent. It is not until the end of the novel when she is in her 80s that she and the narrator begin to live together. She finds his consistent company as pleasant and comforting as he does. Their time together, in what is shown in the novel, is the happiest and most peaceful time of her life.

Unlike the narrator, the pretty girl is not nostalgic. She refuses to dwell on the past and pursues her own success in order to forget where she was raised, and what she was required to do to escape the town of her birth. When her assistant is killed in a shop robbery, however, the pretty girl is compelled to return to the place where she was born.