Exit West

Actual rating: 4.5/5

Well, this is a tough one. I definitely liked this book, but am struggling to find words to explain why... Exit West is an emotionally powerful book, yet it is always soft: it moves slowly and delicately through Saeed and Nadia's story, never quite developing into a full-blown drama (despite the war setting), but despite that I felt a certain heaviness of heart throughout.

Hamid's prose is gentle and poetic, and manages to conjure all sorts of feelings, from the most noble to their complete opposite. I had read only one of his books previously, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and felt the same sort of vibe here. I personally love his writing style, but am fully aware that it is fairly unique and as such may not appeal show more to everyone. Beware if you like reasonable, logic books, as this is definitely not one of them: while I wouldn't go as far as calling Exit West magical realism, it does ask the reader to suspend their disbelief as our protagonists cross magical doors that link their war-stricken country to move to Europe.

Exit West is a highly metaphorical read which, through its quiet and lyrical prose, provides one of the best accounts of the so-called "refugee crisis" I have read so far. Following two young people in love as they do their best to continue living normally while their country crumbles around them under the weight of war, it is a heartbreaking account of the difficult choices and sacrifices that so many are forced to make - and reminds us that deciding to leave is only the beginning of the struggle. Going further than this, Hamid shows us the long-term effects of forced displacement and how it forces change both in Saeed, Nadia and the other migrants around them, and in the societies that receive them.

Incredibly relevant to today's debates, Exit West is a touching tale of love, war and disillusionment; a harrowing account of displacement, survival and growing up. This book reaches across the whole spectrum of human emotions, and that is what makes it especially hard for me to review. In short, highly recommended.

I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way. show less

Does the fairy-tale tone of this novel serve to make the story a universal one of human suffering, or does it instead distance the story from actual human happenings and make it less relevant?

That seems to be the central question when considering how to evaluate this novel.

My initial reaction is to feel that the tone was too distancing, leading to a thin story with flat characters, and that disappointed me. The abundance of narrative summary combined with the lack of representational detail in how displaced people genuinely suffer didn't work for me. (For example, the substitution of 'doors' short-circuits and diminishes the real trials that accompany becoming a refugee.)

I was also put off by the nearly deadpan, nearly comic way that show more horrific acts of violence came across, in a story that is all told in narrative summary. Nadia's cousin gets blown to bits. Saeed's mother loses the top half of her head while searching for an earring in her car. It's all described in the same dispassionate distant way as the rest of the daily happenings. It could be a way to demonstrate that violence soon becomes daily fact--only, there is no moment or event that ever breaks through that distant tone, so it all becomes a little too easy to dismiss.

And I was wary of the unnamed vagueness of a country in upheaval in the beginning of the novel, especially when combined with the concreteness of the places where the couple fled--as if any non-Western upheaval can be substituted for the next one, so the name of the country doesn't matter, whereas the West is full of concrete places with unique characteristics.

And: I felt more than a little manipulated by the representation of Nadia--the "look, a woman from a Muslim country who can swear and have premarital sex!" message felt forced because over and over again she does the unexpected thing--her assertion that she doesn't pray, her swearing, her comfort with promiscuity and psychotropic drugs...it was too much.

But I'm such an outlier here from the reviews in places I respect--The Atlantic, The New Yorker...so I think it comes down to "this wasn't the book I wanted to read," rather than any fault of the book itself. show less

In almost four decades of reading, only two books have moved me to tears. Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams, because of its vignette about children's inevitable separation, and this book.

Seeing the events currently tearing our world apart (war, militancy, premature violent death, emigration) through the eyes of the refugees instead of citizens was refreshing and informative but it moves us only to sympathy.

It is the arc of the love story of the two main characters, the refugees fleeing their homeland, that left me grabbing tissues. Their initial wooing, the codependence, the further progress of their lives together is unfurled with such detail and honesty it becomes the universal story of anyone who has ever experienced infatuation, show more true intimacy and its aftermath. show less

Ah, the prose . . .if I were rating this book on prose alone, it's five star all the way. Hamid could write nearly anything, and after this, I would pick it up. It's not hard to read, but just so well constructed and evocative. Loved reading this book.

Hamid hangs the structure of the book on a young couple, newly in love - Nadia and Saeed. They live in a war torn country where civil strife is on the rise. The book follows the story of this couple through multiple relocations, and as they move, their relationship changes in interesting ways. The author makes fascinating choices throughout. One of them is not to address the challenges of travel, but to use a magical realism device to transport Nadia and Saeed from location to show more location.

Here's where I knock off a star. Let's be realistic here. I'm not likely to give a book with magical realism components that fifth star because I just don't appreciate it at all. It puzzles me. I never quite understand the point. It's not whimsical, like say Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, nor carry-me-to-another-world, like Harry Potter. In this book, I think the author did have some recognition that spelling out the travel arrangements of the protagonists from location to location would simply be boring and detract from the story he wanted to tell. So there was a clear purpose for making the literary choice he did. But, I find it distracting nonetheless. In this book, I struggled to determine if the doors were simply geographic portals, or if they were also time portals. This is just how my mind works, and I have trouble letting it go.

Which is a darn shame because I loved the love story presented here. Hamid digs deeper on how love and need can be intertwined and how external forces can shape it. It was original, and I truly enjoyed watching the evolution of the relationship between Nadia and Saeed. In addition, Hamid's story is very much of the moment with its focus on refugees in peril, but in the end, it seems to be going beyond that into something more dystopian.

It's a very intriguing book, and one I would HIGHLY recommend for book clubs. show less

“The news in those days was full of war and migrants and nativists. And it was full of fracturing too, of regions pulling away from nations and cities pulling away from hinterlands. And it seemed that as everyone was coming together, everyone was also moving apart.”

This novel is a riveting, brilliantly written masterpiece that is about the relationship between a young couple that begins just prior to the eruption of a Civil War in their country. I was amazed by how attuned to the nuances of relationships this author is. He describes the falling in, the developing closeness, the emerging separateness and consequent break so eloquently and with such tenderness.

There is a cinematic quality to this novel. As it focus on these two main show more characters, Saeed and Nadia, and their struggles during these uncertain times, it also flashes to other parts of the world and small moments in the lives of others. The writing is razor sharp, profound, full of insight. There are no wasted words. I listened to this audiobook in my car, and the number of times I skipped backwards to listen to something again or just in case I may have missed something exceeded that of any other book I’ve listened to. If I had been reading an ebook or physical book, I would have easily found something to highlight on every page.

The initial setting is in an unnamed Middle Eastern country where Nadia and Said meet in an evening class studying corporate identity and product branding. Their seemingly normal lives and beginning romance are upturned rapidly as insurgents try to take over the city. There is a sense of impending doom. War is raging, militants are flooding into their city, and people are dying or disappearing. There are extreme rules in place regarding dress and social conduct with the opposite sex. Certain religious sects are being persecuted. People are being hung in the streets. However, there are “doors,” which even the most reputable journalists are acknowledging the existence of.

Without knowing where these doors may lead, Sayeed and Nadia decide to flee through one of these doors and so begins their journey, first to Mikonos, then London, then Marin. In these other lands, they are refugees who are kept separate from the nativists. It’s an uncertain world, but eventually they are working at a camp to building a home for themselves which they accomplish together. However, the chaos and tumult of the times in the early phase of their relationship has taken a toll. They see each other differently as their roles change and their location changes. The excited young lovers from the beginning of the novel have changed as their world has changed. They have been through so much together, have been codependent by necessity. They begin to see each other through different lenses. The chaos of the times and world of being migrants brought their romance along more quickly, but also threatens it.

More broadly, this novel is about people, migrants, immigrants, natives. The message is loud and clear. We are all people and should treat each other as such. There are always people fleeing wars, political unrest, religious persecution, and so on. We need to be more tolerant. In this era of Brexit and Trump’s travel bans, with countries fearing incoming people flooding into their homelands, this book offers a radical, beautiful challenge. Mohsin Hamid has said that he used doors (the only fantastical element in this novel) as the route to other countries, because he wanted to focus on the actual immigrant experience, not the journey between countries. In this novel, Hamid deftly explores the pain of leaving behind a grieving recently widowed father in hopes of a better life, of escaping premature death. A quote from the book regarding this: “when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind.” He also explores the plight of the immigrant in a foreign land, pushed to the outskirts by natives. He describes how these situations affect people in different ways and how migrants change through these experiences. He ends the novel with this final quote: “We are all migrants through time.” I highly recommend this timely book to everyone! It is intelligent, insightful and tender altogether.

For discussion questions and more, please see: http://www.book-chatter.com/?p=2400 show less

A gently moving, quietly poignant story about a couple fleeing from war across borders and time to new lives. More than that, the story of Nadia and Saeed is mirrored in many ways by those of others, of a long-separated mother and daughter, of an rootless old veteran, of two elderly men finding companionship in each other, a mute maid unwilling to move from service. Though the emotions run deep and the stories feel true, Hamid keeps distance from the characters and situations, such that our protagonists' war-torn country could be any country, and these side stories could be any stories, and these migrants could be any people, and we are all at least "migrants through time". Indeed, in this story about transience and change and show more acceptance, Hamid places heavy emphasis on time and cycles. This is apparent thematically in the old woman being a "migrant through time" and migrants making barters "of time", but also in Hamid's distinctive writing style: distinctively long and meandering sentences each seem to take their time to arrive at their destination, noticing and reflecting on much on the way, even once, memorably, describing a woman's experiences in a house through childhood and marriages and deaths, such that her lifetime seemed to be encapsulated from beginning to end in a single sentence.

Plus: bi representation, humanistic characterisations of religion, and a generally deeply-felt and -expressed appreciation of humanity. A lot of very nice things to appreciate in this book. (Thanks, Adam, for the copy! :)) show less

Saeed and Nadia meet and fall in love. But they live in a city where militants are taking over, and soon the two decide they must leave, going through one of the doors to, hopefully, a better life. In each place they journey, they find themselves with fellow refugees and migrants, dealing with the attitudes of the "natives" in the places they arrive. Each door is a chance - will they end up someplace better? And as they change, react, and carve out lives for themselves, their relationship morphs along with them.

Through his story, Hamid challenges the reader to think about the arbitrary boundaries we make between countries, between "us" and "them". The form of their travel from place to place, going through doors and just ending up in show more another country, reminded me a little of the magical realism aspect of The Underground Railroad. I enjoyed the spare prose and grappling with the situations in which Saeed and Nadia find themselves as they try to make a place for themselves in the world. show less