About the Book
In a city swollen by refugees but still mostly at peace, or at least not yet openly at war, two young people notice one another.
They share a cup of coffee, a smile, an evening meal. They try not to hear the sound of bombs getting closer every night, the radio announcing new laws, the public executions.
Meanwhile, rumours are spreading of strange black doors in secret places across the city, doors that lead to London or San Francisco, Greece or Dubai. Someday soon, the time will come for this young couple to seek out one such door: joining the multitudes fleeing a collapisng city, hoping against hope, looking for their place in the world.
Format: Hardcover (229 pages) Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
Publication date: 2nd March 2017 Genre: Literary Fiction
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My Review
I approached Exit West with some trepidation having struggled with novels with elements of magical realism in the past. I wasn’t sure I could embrace the concept of doors through which you pass to other parts of the world. As it turned out, I liked how the author concentrated on the motivations for migration, the experience of those who migrate and the response of those on the receiving end of migration rather than details of migrants’ journeys. The doors concept allowed this simplicity and I think also emphasised the suddenness of the transition that migrants experience.
The story begins in an unnamed war-torn city that most readers, given when the book was written, have assumed to be Syria although, sadly, today it could just as easily be many other countries around the world. The conflict makes use of modern technology such as drones giving it a slightly dystopian feel.
Although different in personality and background, Saeed and Nadia meet and fall in love. Soon, however, it becomes clear there is no future for them in the city in which they live and they use an intermediary to exit via one of the doors, ending up first in Greece, later in London.
But wherever they go they often find themselves in a similar situation: living in basic conditions in workers camps or as squatters in sealed off neighbourhoods. As more and more people use the doors, dodging or bribing guards to gain access, there is conflict – sometimes violent conflict – with ‘nativists’ who resent the influx of people from different cultures, who speak different languages and have different religious practices. In some places, the migrants face attack by government forces. It leads Nadia to wonder if they have swapped one bad situation for another. ‘The fury of those nativists advocating wholesale slaughter was what struck Nadia most, and it struck her because it seemed to familiar, so much like the fury of the militants in her own city. She wondered if she and Saeed had done anything by moving, whether the faces and buildings had changed but the basic reality of their predicament had not.’
Their experiences gradually change Saeed and Nadia’s relationship, each responding in different ways to their new situation. Saeed’s instinctive reaction is to seek out people similar to himself and put down roots, Nadia’s impulse is to move on in search of some indefinable ‘something else’.
Interspersed with Saeed and Nadia’s story are brief vignettes describing the experiences of others who travel through the doors. One particularly heart-warming story demonstrates how migration can help forge new connections.
Exit West as well as being beautifully written is definitely a book to get you thinking. For instance I was struck by the notion that we are all migrants of a sort, migrants through time. That even if we stay in the same place, things change around us over time and we must adapt to them.
Exit West is book two of my 20 Books of Summer 2025.
In three words: Thought-provoking, insightful, imaginative
About the Author
Mohsin Hamid is the author of four novels, Moth Smoke , The Reluctant Fundamentalist , How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia , and Exit West , and a book of essays, Discontent and Its Civilizations. His writing has been featured on bestseller lists, adapted for the cinema, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, selected as winner or finalist of twenty awards, and translated into thirty-five languages.
Born in Lahore, he has spent about half his life there and much of the rest in London, New York, and California.
Connect with Mohsin
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