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Exit West A Novel Mohsin Hamid Books

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Exit West A Novel Mohsin Hamid Books

The world needs novels like "Exit West", exceptionally well-written stories that tackle timely issues in a unique and compelling way. The story centers on Nadia and Saeed, two young individuals that fall in love despite religious and societal norms conspiring against them. The story is set in an unnamed country, but conjured up mental images of somewhere like Syria, Pakistan or even India. Their relationship begins to flourish just as civil unrest builds in their country, forcing them to flee as refugees.

The brilliant bit of magical realism that Hamid creates are teleportation doors that transport individuals from one country to another. As potential migrants hear about these doors, they become more difficult to escape through, guarded by the power structures. The more desirous the location, the harder it becomes to escape. The story of the refugee experience is brilliantly captured as the two lovers wind up in an upscale mansion in London overtaken by other refugees, many from Africa, along with their sojourn to Northern CA in Marin County. We come to see the characters undergo the pain and struggle of dislocation from friends, family and familiar surroundings while struggling to survive in foreign places where they are generally unwelcome. Each of them copes with the situation in different ways, creating tension in their relationship with each other.

This is an absolutely astonishing book of love and loss, hope and failure, hate and acceptance. It is rightly hailed as one of the best books of 2017 and should be on everyone's must read list. It will undoubtedly become one of the best books of the decade.


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Exit West A Novel Mohsin Hamid Books Reviews

Exit West is one of those novels that I’m still puzzling over, some time after finishing it. The author makes some interesting choices in terms of technique. So this review is really my reflections up to now rather than a settled opinion.

First, Exit West is narrated by an omniscient narrator with a cool, detached voice. This adds to the sense that the events it describes are normal, unsurprising. It tells the story of Saeed and Nadia, who live in an unnamed city in a country on the brink of civil war.

Saeed has light stubble and Nadia wears a black robe, at a time when people could still choose what to wear, ‘so these choices meant something’. They become involved and in contrast to their appearances, it is Nadia who has broken with expectations by living independently, estranged from her family, while Saeed still lives at home.

At first they do the things new couples do. They text incessantly. They use recreational drugs by moonlight. They listen to music and negotiate their attitudes to sex. But the civil war takes first their freedom and then their safety. It seems like the only option is to escape.

Saeed and Nadia leave through one of the ‘doors’ by which refugees leave war zones, generally after handing over money to traffickers. The ‘doors’ open and close apparently randomly, offering an abrupt dislocation from one place to another. It suggests something magical, without human agency, while the reality is anything but.

While Saeed and Nadia’s home city is unnamed, the events described feel contemporary and real. However the places where they go after they leave, which are named, known locations, are subtly different, as if we’re looking at a possible future or an alternate reality. They are in social upheaval, they are more segregated, even less hopeful than they are now.

Then there are vignettes throughout the book interrupting the main narrative, showing immigrants and refugees in other regions suddenly appearing through doors, as if to remind us that this is happening everywhere, all the time.

Saeed and Nadia are well realised characters, at once unique and recognisable. As they leave their home the narrative fragments and their stories become less absorbing. It is as if in becoming refugees, whose main preoccupation is survival, whose choices are circumscribed, they have less time to be psychologically complex and interesting, not only to a reader but perhaps to themselves.

So while the story didn’t engage me throughout the book, the ideas did, and still do. Exit West challenges you to think in new ways about a familiar issue, to question what you understand when you see generic terms like refugee or migrant applied to millions of individuals, who each has their home, their emotional life, their door, and has to make the decision to take that chance, or not, while they can.
*
I received a copy of Exit West from the publisher via Netgalley.
Once in a while I come across a novel that makes me wish I were teaching again, a novel that begs for questions and discussion. This is one of those novels. Its brevity belies its complexity. Its characters -- main, minor, fleeting, and implied -- represent humanity as it is today. Its premise, while fanciful, creates the opportunity for readers to wonder if we have the courage to radically change how we view others and the world in which we all live. I read in a review that this is a hopeful novel and initially I was suspicious that a novel centering on the plight of innocent refugees fleeing violence and death could ultimately proffer a hopeful message. But hope there is despite the literal impossibility of its central plot device. The doors are a metaphor; do we have the courage to open them to those with the courage to walk through? Told in a spare but descriptive narrative, Mr. Hamid challenges his readers to open their minds to the possibilities that the future holds.
The world needs novels like "Exit West", exceptionally well-written stories that tackle timely issues in a unique and compelling way. The story centers on Nadia and Saeed, two young individuals that fall in love despite religious and societal norms conspiring against them. The story is set in an unnamed country, but conjured up mental images of somewhere like Syria, Pakistan or even India. Their relationship begins to flourish just as civil unrest builds in their country, forcing them to flee as refugees.

The brilliant bit of magical realism that Hamid creates are teleportation doors that transport individuals from one country to another. As potential migrants hear about these doors, they become more difficult to escape through, guarded by the power structures. The more desirous the location, the harder it becomes to escape. The story of the refugee experience is brilliantly captured as the two lovers wind up in an upscale mansion in London overtaken by other refugees, many from Africa, along with their sojourn to Northern CA in Marin County. We come to see the characters undergo the pain and struggle of dislocation from friends, family and familiar surroundings while struggling to survive in foreign places where they are generally unwelcome. Each of them copes with the situation in different ways, creating tension in their relationship with each other.

This is an absolutely astonishing book of love and loss, hope and failure, hate and acceptance. It is rightly hailed as one of the best books of 2017 and should be on everyone's must read list. It will undoubtedly become one of the best books of the decade.