Will I love Exit West?

A cracking good read. Much recommended. Thought provoking and beautifully crafted with expert understanding of many complex cross-cultural issues.

This book is about a young couple who fall in love in a city gripped by war, and step through a magic door which transports them to a different life. 

It is a careful study of how their relationship slowly changes, their love morphing into something else.

Hamid is a master stylist, and while this book is not ostensibly about metamorphosis, it spoke directly to the three main questions I ask in my own book: Where did we come from? Where are we going? And what is the self?

A timely story of migration, global in scale. It's told intimately through the travels and love affair of one young man and one young woman. (Still, it introduces us, in the vignette, to what seems like scores of other refugees coming from and bound in all directions—picture an airline's route map.)

I was drawn in by the couple's normal quality; country of origin and ethnicity aside, they could be anybody I know, any two kids at a coffee bar. There's a magical device: doors that painlessly transport people elsewhere without the terrifying refugee experiences of ocean crossings in leaking boats… show more.

It brought home to me the horror of the life of refugees under constant threat as they try to escape growing threat but in a creative and original way.

I came to this after reading Hamid's most recent magical realist work on racial transformation, 'The Last White Man'. In 'Exit West', Hamid reimagines the the migrant crisis, creating magical doors where Global South refugees can teleport to the West. Hamid writes beautifully through extremely long sentences that create an all-encompassing sense of his characters' subjectivity and perspectives.

The book is a dizzying mix: the grim realities of displacement are intertwined with speculative fiction – fantasy even.

A love story of two migrants, Saeed and Nadia, who traverse the globe to escape conflict and try and find a way to be together. Oftentimes, they find their way across borders through a series of ‘doors’ – a device reminiscent of CS Lewis (in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe) and one which takes the protagonists across the world. Elegant, spare prose; brutal realities, and electrifying flights of fancy – Exit West has it all.

One reason I… show more.

Exit West follows a young couple who must escape their war-torn Middle Eastern city and find refuge somewhere on this shrinking planet.

The couple loses their sense of home while their home loses its history. Hamid writes with a detached intimacy, like from the viewpoint of a drone, the kind that bombed Nadia and Sayed's city, as it hovers over the couple during their most challenging and intimate moments.

Still, while they leave everything they know, Nadia and Sayed find home in each other. Hamid crafts a sense of place not bound to one location, but to two hearts. As… show more.

A moving love story set against a surreal landscape. The spare and inventive prose packs a powerful punch in this novella-length book. 

A subtle and moving examination of how relationships survive against a backdrop of forced migration. It cleverly explores who has the right to be where. The ending to this unconventional love story will stay with you long after reading. This book is perfect for book club discussion groups as it poses so many important questions of our time.