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Exit West (2017)

by Mohsin Hamid

Other authors: John Erik Bøe Lindgren (Translator)

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
3,5782313,515 (3.82)333
In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet -- sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors -- doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through. Exit West follows the couple as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are.… (more)
  1. 40
    The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (vwinsloe)
    vwinsloe: Both books use a magical means of transportation to illuminate the plight of refugees (runaway slaves in one and immigrants in the other.)
  2. 10
    The Road Home by Rose Tremain (JenMDB)
  3. 10
    Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck (charl08)
    charl08: Similar rif on current refugee 'crisis' - but in a very different direction.
  4. 10
    American War by Omar El Akkad (sturlington)
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» See also 333 mentions

English (228)  Dutch (1)  Italian (1)  All languages (230)
Showing 1-5 of 228 (next | show all)
You may say Hamid is a dreamer. He imagines a world in which human migration becomes an unstoppable physical act, so that immigration policies and border controls are moot. Millions of refugees and migrants from poor countries step through doors and emerge in rich Western countries. The West initially tries to counter this human movement through force, people believe in scarcity and seek to protect what they have, religious teaching often being a weak force in conflict with human instinct, but fairly soon the West accepts new arrivals as nothing else can really be done, and "reports of [conflict] seemed less than apocalyptic... existence went on in tolerable safety."

But the macro view is not Hamid's focus. He does not write about policymakers, or political leaders, or national figures. He writes about individuals and how the experience of migration affects them; mostly through the characters of Saeed and Nadia (from an unnamed Mosul), but also through vignettes of other people from other places. Of one family, he writes, "That they were ashamed, and that they did not yet know that shame, for the displaced, was a common feeling, and that there was, therefore, no particular shame in being ashamed."

The novel is more dreamy than detail oriented, more magical realist that realist, touchingly written, and its lovely humanist approach to the issue of refugees and migration is certainly timely and welcome. When Hamid writes, "the only divisions that mattered now were between those who sought the right of passage and those who would deny them passage, and in such a world the religion of the righteous must defend those who sought passage," it's a clear political and religious rallying cry for the sort of world we should aspire to. ( )
  lelandleslie | Feb 24, 2024 |
Unnamed country amidst a civil war. Two young lovers caught within the levers of a real and unreal destiny. ( )
  ben_r47 | Feb 22, 2024 |
The novel begins in an unnamed city in an unnamed country, which I immediately assumed was somewhere in Southwest Asia. The city is “swollen by refugees but still mostly at peace, or at least not yet openly at war.” A young man and woman meet in a night-school business class, become friends, start hanging out as conditions in their city deteriorate while government forces clash with outside religious radicals and neighborhoods are destroyed one by one. The couple begins looking for rumored “doors that could take you elsewhere, often to places far away, well removed from this deathtrap of a country.” They go through several of these doors during the novel, traveling from Mykonos to London to Marin, California. I found the writing in this novel at times lyrical, but at times I had trouble following the story, wondering about people that were dropped in here and there and then disappeared from the narrative. Nevertheless, it is timely story (written in 2017) about the plight of political refugees, about war and love and humanity and nativism and community, about coupling and uncoupling. The vehicle for migration – doors people might step through on their somewhere else – hints of magic realism in which to wrap and blunt the sharp edges of difficult journeys toward the promise and hope of a better life, in the tradition of Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad or Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer. ( )
  bschweiger | Feb 4, 2024 |
Lyrically beautiful. He has such a particular writing some. Full review to come! ( )
  Jenniferforjoy | Jan 29, 2024 |
3.5 I think. I enjoyed most of this story, especially the beginning when the reader is watching a romance unfold in a war torn city. The magical concept of doors acting as portals between countries is an interesting one and I wish this had taken a little more time to explore the stories of other couples and families that used the doors and not just Saeed and Nadia. These stories were flirted with from time to time but I wanted more.

By the end of the book I found the writing style a shade off putting. At first the removed perspective was interesting but the more I got to know the characters I wanted to shed the detachment but the book forced it upon me. ( )
  hmonkeyreads | Jan 25, 2024 |
Showing 1-5 of 228 (next | show all)
Sortida a Occident, de Mohsin Hamid, comença sent una història d’amor íntima i emocionant i acaba sent una profecia novel·lada sobre el futur que, globalment, ens espera. En Saeed i la Nadia són dos joves que viuen en un país del qual no se’ns diu el nom però que per les seves característiques -és musulmà i està governat per un règim autoritari contra el qual se subleven milícies integristes- resulta familiar. L’amor entre en Saeed, retret i conservador, i la Nadia, valenta i independent, creix a mesura que el seu país s’esllavissa per l’abisme de la guerra, cosa que els obliga a fugir. És en aquest punt que Hamid es treu de la màniga un cop d’efecte argumental que desplaça les coordenades de gènere de la novel·la. Resulta que, arreu del planeta, han començat a aparèixer portes secretes i especials que transporten qui les travessa a un altre indret del globus. La introducció d’un element tan explícitament fantasiós fa que, després de creure durant tot el terç inicial que ens trobàvem davant d’un relat realista (si bé l’autor va preparant el que vindrà mitjançant unes escenes breus i estranyes), de sobte ens descobrim abocats a una mena de faula futurològica.
added by bugaderes39 | editAra, Pere Antoni Pons (Nov 11, 2017)
 
Exit West is animated – confused, some may think – by this constant motion between genre, between psychological and political space, and between a recent past, an intensified present and a near future. It’s a motion that mirrors that of a planet where millions are trying to slip away “from once fertile plains cracking with dryness, from seaside villages gasping beneath tidal surges, from overcrowded cities and murderous battlefields”.
added by VivienneR | editThe Guardian, Sukhdev Sandhu (Mar 12, 2017)
 

» Add other authors (10 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Mohsin Hamidprimary authorall editionscalculated
Lindgren, John Erik BøeTranslatorsecondary authorall editionsconfirmed
Köpfer, MonikaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Quinn, MarysarahDesignersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Willey, RachelCover designersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed

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For Naved and Nasim
First words
In a city swollen by refugees but still mostly at peace, or at least not yet openly at war, a young man met a young woman in a classroom and did not speak to her.
Quotations
‘I can understand it,’ she said. ‘Imagine if you lived here. And millions of people from all over the world suddenly arrived.’
’Millions arrived in our country,’ Saeed replied. ‘When there were wars nearby.’
‘That was different. Our country was poor. We didn’t feel we had as much to lose.’
Without borders nations appeared to be becoming somewhat illusory, and people were questioning what role they had to play.
But that is the way of things, for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind.
Loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another.
We are all migrants through time.
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In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet -- sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors -- doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through. Exit West follows the couple as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are.

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