Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Mohsin Hamid's fourth novel came out in 2017 and has garnered heaps of praise. It is the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2017 and is one of Amazon's Best Books of the Year for 2017. The year it came out, Exit West was nominated for the BSFA Award for Best Novel, the Booker Prize, Kirkus Prize for Fiction, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. It has also collected a couple nominations in the years since, including the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. It deals with death, gun violence, racism, death, grief, war, and deportation.

Nadia and Saeed meet as their country teeters on the brink of civil war, and although they are interested in each other, it is the feeling of danger as that war breaks out in earnest that spurs them to a premature relationship and a feeling of closeness. Soon, all they can think of is how to get away as the violence around them only grows more severe. They hear whispers of doors that can transport you far away, to different countries, and they know they must find one of those doors. Yet when they step through and are thrust into a new place, with a language the don't speak and customs they don't know, with no support system except each other, they struggle to hold on to anything that feels familiar.

Exit West is a difficult book to explain. I chose it because I needed a book with a cardinal direction in the title for a challenge and it was readily available, so I went in not knowing much. It is very short and easy to get through. The first part of the novel focuses on Saeed and Nadia before they leave the country they were born in as the country becomes entrenched in war and even leaving your home is wrought with danger. Actually, even staying inside your home is wrought with danger. It is well written and although the author writes from a distant perspective, you still feel concerned for the characters. He discusses wartime atrocities with a bluntness that was jarring, but made it feel more realistic somehow, in the same way that you become inured to those atrocities when you live through them. The second half of the novel takes a more magical turn as the characters use the doors to leave their country behind. The way the doors, and the refugees who use them, are received feels especially poignant right now. However, the distance between the reader and the characters never allowed any intimacy, I did not feel connected to the characters in any meaningful way, especially once they went through the doors. Similarly, while I appreciated the brevity in the first half, I felt like the second half lacked real substance because of it.

I'm giving Exit West 3.5 stars out of 5. I would like to say that I think it is one of those rare novels that would be better if it were slightly longer, but I can't truly say that. I'm glad I read it, I did not dislike it, but but the second half left me wanting more.

For more from Mohsin Hamid, check out his website at https://www.mohsinhamid.com/

Pairs well with refried beans and owning a telescope, but not spying on the neighbors.