Exit West: SHORTLISTED for the Man Booker Prize 2017

by

Published Jan. 1, 2018 by Penguin.

ISBN:
978-0-241-97906-8
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(3 reviews)

"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. [This book] 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."--From regular print book.

6 editions

reviewed Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

An Interesting Take On Migration

The writer's style makes this book a quick and easy read. That's how things seem on the surface. Two young people, Nadia and Saeed, escape their war-torn country through the use of 'doors' that instantaneously transport a person from one country to another. The author does not explain how the doors came into being, just that at some point they began appearing and people began using them. An uncontrollable mass-migration begins as people attempt to escape war, poverty or just want a better life. Through this premise, Hamid explores notions of racism, nationalism, cultural clashes and religion. Most of this is done through relating the experiences of Nadia and Saeed as we see how their relationship alters as they travel through a rapidly changing world. This book is a reminder to keep the doors open.