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![Exit West: SHORTLISTED for the Man Booker Prize 2017 by [Mohsin Hamid]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51HIhKXLWzL._SY346_.jpg)
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Exit West: SHORTLISTED for the Man Booker Prize 2017 Kindle Edition
Mohsin Hamid
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Length: 226 pages | Word Wise: Enabled | Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled |
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Language: English |
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Product description
Review
10 BEST BOOKS OF 2017, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
FINALIST FOR THE 2017 MAN BOOKER PRIZE, THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS, and THE KIRKUS AWARD "Hamid exploits fiction's capacity to elicit empathy and identification to imagine a better world. It is also a possible world. Exit West does not lead to utopia, but to a near future and the dim shapes of strangers that we can see through a distant doorway. All we have to do is step through it and meet them. --Viet Thanh Nguyen, The New York Times Book Review (cover) "In spare, crystalline prose, Hamid conveys the experience of living in a city under siege with sharp, stabbing immediacy. He shows just how swiftly ordinary life -- with all its banal rituals and routines -- can morph into the defensive crouch of life in a war zone. ... [and] how insidiously violence alters the calculus of daily life. ... By mixing the real and the surreal, and using old fairy-tale magic, Hamid has created a fictional universe that captures the global perils percolating beneath today's headlines." --Michiko Kakutani, New York Times "Lyrical and urgent, the globalist novel evokes the dreams and disillusionments that follow Saeed and Nadia....and peels away the dross of bigotry to expose the beauty of our common humanity." --O, the Oprah Magazine "A beautiful and very detailed look at what it means to be an immigrant...An incredible book." -Sarah Jessica Parker on Read it Forward
"A little like the eerily significant Margaret Atwood novel, this love story amid the rubble of violence, uncertainty, and modernity feels at once otherworldly and all too real." --New York Magazine's The Strategist This is the best writing of Hamid's career... Readers will find themselves going back and savoring each paragraph several times before moving on. He's that good. ... Breathtaking." --NPR.org
"Nearly every page reflects the tangible impact of life during wartime--not just the blood and gunsmoke of daily bombardments, but the quieter collateral damage that seeps in. The true magic of [Exit West] is how it manages to render it all in a narrative so moving, audacious, and indelibly human." -Entertainment Weekly, "A rating"
"Hamid rewrites the world as a place thoroughly, gorgeously, and permanently overrun by refugees and migrants. ... But, still, he depicts the world as resolutely beautiful and, at its core, unchanged. The novel feels immediately canonical, so firm and unerring is Hamid's understanding of our time and its most pressing questions." --NewYorker.com No novel is really about the cliche called 'the human condition, ' but good novels expose and interpret the particular condition of the humans in their charge, and this is what Hamid has achieved here. If in its physical and perilous immediacy Nadia and Saeed's condition is alien to the mass of us, Exit West makes a final, certain declaration of affinity: 'We are all migrants through time.'" --Washington Post "Skillful and panoramic from the outset... [A] meticulously crafted, ambitious story of many layers, many geopolitical realities, many lives and circumstances...Here is the world, he seems to be saying, the direction we're hurtling in. How are we going to mitigate the damage we've done?" -The New York Review of Books "Like the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but set in the real world. You'll be hearing about it, so get into it now." --TheSkimm "Spellbinding." -Buzzfeed
"Hamid graphically explores a fundamental and important ontological question: Is it possible for us to conceive of ourselves at all, except in juxtaposition to an "other"?... What is remarkable about Hamid's narrative is that war is not, in fact, able to marginalize the "precious mundanity" of everyday life. Instead -- and herein lies Hamid's genius as a storyteller -- the mundanity, the minor joys of life, like bringing flowers to a lover, smoking a joint, and looking at stars, compete with the horrors of war." -Los Angeles Times "In an era when powerful ruling groups -- often in the minority -- are gripped by a sense of religious and ethnic nativism, Mohsin offers these two, the millions they represent, and us, comfort: that plausible, desirable futures can be imagined, that new tribes may be formed, and that life will go on... If we are looking for the story of our time, one that can project a future that is both more bleak and more hopeful than that which we can yet envision, this novel is faultless." -Boston Globe
"[A] slender treasure of a novel." -NPR's Book Concierge
Terrifying, hopeful, and all too relevant. --People Magazine
"It was as if Hamid knew what was going to happen to America and the world, and gave us a road map to our future... This book blew the top off my head. It's at once terrifying and, in the end, oddly hopeful." -Ayelet Waldman, New York Times Book Review If there is one book everyone should read ASAP, it is Mohsin Hamid's Exit West...Short, unsentimental, deeply intimate, and so very powerful. --Goop "Spare and haunting, it's magical realism meets the all-too-real." -W Magazine "Taut but haunting." -Vanity Fair
Powerfully evokes the violence and anxiety of lives lived 'under the drone-crossed sky.'" --Time Magazine "Hamid's timely and spare new novel confronts the inevitability of mass global immigration, the unbroken cycle of violence and the indomitable human will to connect and love." --Huffington Post "A great romance that is also a story of refugees; this couldn't be more timely." --Flavorwire "Exit West is a compelling read that will make you think about the times we are living in right now." -PopSugar Beautiful. -The Rumpus "Eerily prescient." -Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker.com
"[A] thought experiment that pivots on the crucial figure of this century: the migrant... Hamid's cautious, even fastidious prose makes the sudden flashes of social breakdown all the more affecting...Evading the lure of both the utopian and the dystopian, Exit West makes some rough early sketches of the world that must come if we (or is it 'you'?) are to avoid walling out the rest of the human race." -Financial Times
"Exit West operates on another plane... Beautiful and poetic even at its most devastating." -Book Riot
"Raw, poetic, and frighteningly prescient." --BBC.com
"Timely and resonant." --Publisher's Weekly, Top 10 Most-Anticipated Literary Fiction of 2017 --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
Book Description
About the Author
From the Inside Flap
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.
Eventually the problem is too big to ignore: it's not safe for her to live alone, she must move in with his family, even though the young couple are not married and that too is a problem. 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 man and this woman to seek out one such door: joining the multitudes fleeing a collapsing city, hoping against hope, looking for their place in the world.
From the Man Booker-shortlisted author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist comes a journey crossing borders and continents and into a possible future. Exit West is a love story from the eye of the storm. It is a song of hope and compassion. It reaches toward something essential in humankind - something still alive, still breathing, an open hand and a thudding heart under all the rubble and dust.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.From the Back Cover
'One of the year's most significant literary works' New York Times
In a city far away, bombs and assassinations shatter lives every day. Yet even here, hope renews itself, welling up through the rubble. Somewhere in this city, two young people are smiling, hesitating, sharing cheap cigarettes, speaking softly then boldly, falling in love.
As the violence worsens and escape feels ever more necessary, they hear rumour of mysterious black doors appearing all over the city, all over the world. To walk through a door is to find a new life - perhaps in Greece, in London, in California - and to lose the old one forever . . .
What does it mean to leave your only home behind?
Can you belong to many places at once?
And when the hour comes and the door stands open before you - will you go?
'Thrilling, urgent, gorgeously written' Metro
'A masterpiece' Michael Chabon
'Addictively readable and brilliantly written. Fantastic' Mail on Sunday
'Stunning. First-rate literature: a work of beauty that will make you think and feel' Spectator
'Hamid's finest book' Kiran Desai
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.Product details
- ASIN : B01LXKLSQ0
- Publisher : Penguin; 1st edition (2 March 2017)
- Language : English
- File size : 1842 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 226 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 78,244 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
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Top reviews from Australia
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The story was frightening in regards to a country being invaded and life changing for the inhabitants. This is something Australians may hear in our media frequently but few of us could never imagine what that would be like.
It’s not dissimilar to the “Tomorrow Series” of books by John Marsden - except, Exit West is based on reality.
The style of writing was strange. The book is full of long sentences that become a paragraph and the author, Mohsin Hamid provides no warning of a significant event in the story. The death of someone in the story falls off the page with no fanfare or warning. The death of Saeed’s mother is stated as a matter of fact and that is all.
However, the reason for this could be due to the characters having to deal with so much grief and change in their day to day lives that the death of someone close is just another significant event like the many others faced on a daily basis.
Then there is the use of the term “doors” in relation to the characters escaping from their country and moving on to other countries in which to live. Similar to the movie “The Adjustment Bureau” where Matt Damon is confronted with people who can pass through doors to another region of New York, doors are used figuratively in Exit West as a way to escape conflict and potential death.
And Exit West is a love story with a difference. Saeed and Nadia have a relationship but it’s nothing like a relationship seen in Hollywood movies or experienced by young Australians . It struggles along with their difficulty to communicate, be seen together let along holding hands in public. Once again it’s understandable that a relationship would suffer in a country that is invaded by militant religious fundamentalist. But even after they escape through a door, the relationship struggles. Intimacy is rare as it appears the couple hold onto their individualism. Saeed seems absorbed with his lost country and religion whilst Nadia continues to wear Islamic clothing despite not being all that religious. They did not have the luxury to enjoy a happy relationship on a beach whilst on holiday, or trips in the countryside for a picnic.
I liked Exit West and I would recommend it to a friend.
Malcolm Brown
I did get caught up in the telling of this very important subject, but I gradually lost interest. It’s the story of refugees finding themselves in very foreign countries and how they and the natives deal with it. Their lives are uncertain, changing from bored hunger to terror when hearing a knock on a wall or a voice outside, but I’m afraid the repetitive nature of their boredom spilled over to me.
The style at first is pretty straightforward, and I didn’t care for it. Then the author started adding some long sentences with lots of thoughts connected, and I enjoyed these, as they kept me turning the page. After one too many, though, it felt like a device to make me read, which distracted me from the story itself and put me off. Might be just me. And I don't know how many there actually are.
The story. Nadia and Saeed are the young woman and young man who live and work in an unnamed city where Saeed says morning and evening prayers and Nadia wears a black robe just to keep men from bothering her. So, somewhere in the Middle East. They meet when studying the same course.
Then there are the parents, and there’s quite a lively bit about his mother’s ravenous sexual appetite (no idea why), and all through the story, there’s a recurring theme about Nadia and Saeed: will-they-won’t-they progress beyond fiddling and diddling.
Normal family dynamics, one might think. But then it’s mentioned, almost casually, that Nadia’s cousin had been
“ blown by a truck bomb to bits, literally to bits, the largest of which, in Nadia’s cousin’s case, were a head and two‑thirds of an arm.”
As events like this become everyday and things deteriorate further, they start looking for ways to escape to the West, and here the author has used magical realism, fantasy, call it what you like. It’s reminiscent of the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe from 1950 or the more recent wormhole in Stephen King's novel 11/22/63, which I read only recently. Suffice it to say, refugee camps spring up all over the world, seemingly out of nowhere.
Here’s why they want to go. Saeed’s father is walking home. (At 138 words, this is not the longest sentence in the book, but you’ll get a sense of the style. I quite enjoy it . . . now and then. Occasionally.
“Once as he stood there he saw some young boys playing football and this cheered him, and reminded him of his own skill at the game when he was their age, but then he realized that they were not young boys, but teenagers, young men, and they were not playing with a ball but with the severed head of a goat, and he thought, barbarians, but then it dawned upon him that this was the head not of a goat but of a human being, with hair and a beard, and he wanted to believe he was mistaken, that the light was failing and his eyes were playing tricks on him, and that is what he told himself, as he tried not to look again, but something about their expressions left him in little doubt of the truth.”
And we have bodies on pikes, soldiers bursting into buildings, murdering people because of their last names, whatever. Time to go. But it's a terrible thing to leave family
"for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind."
Nadia and Saeed’s relationship keeps swinging between passion, friendship, camaraderie, disagreement and antagonism. Very often we’re told how they are sitting or sleeping, cramped in a tiny area, thighs touching, or arms touching or shoulders bumping or just huddled for warmth. They have to stick, literally stick, close together for protection, which makes their relationship even more difficult.
Nadia says the natives (where they've ended up) are so scared they might do anything.
"‘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.’
It's been my experience that in times of strife, it's those who don't have a lot to share who are the most generous. People like me, who live comfortably, are more protective of their own 'stuff'.
Their story didn't really grab me, but I am horrified by the overall plight of the millions of people in these situations, having to throw their lots in together, trusting people they don't know and just running from bombs and slaughter into who-knows-what. From the frying pan into the fire?
I did enjoy meeting some of the other people. (Another long sentence.)
“Initially Nadia did not follow much of what was being said, just snippets here and there, but over time she understood more and more, and she understood also that the Nigerians were in fact not all Nigerians, some were half‑Nigerians, or from places that bordered Nigeria, from families that spanned both sides of a border, and further that there was perhaps no such thing as a Nigerian, or certainly no one common thing, for different Nigerians spoke different tongues among themselves, and belonged to different religions.”
I have no doubt this will be a runaway hit. I do hope it makes us all uncomfortable enough to pressure our countries to do better.
Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin / Hamish Hamilton for the review copy from which I’ve quoted.
Top reviews from other countries

The trouble with this book, for me, is the plot. The concept is an interesting one - by some sort of unexplained magic, portals start opening randomly all over the world between different places. This of course creates some serious migration issues, as the poor and desperate can suddenly access wealthier countries in a safe, easy way. Most of the story revolves around Saeed and Nadia, a young couple in an unnamed war-town city (presumably from the context in either Syria or Iraq). It charts their life in the city as it descends into chaos, then their escape to Europe through a magical portal, and their lives afterwards.
Both Saeed and Nadia are interesting characters, who were likeable. I didn't feel a very powerful connection with either of them, but I did like them. The first part of the book, describing their relationship developing against the backdrop of a city falling prey to war and violence, was the strongest. The descriptions of life for ordinary people when a developed city becomes a battlefield were extremely well done and moving.
For me, the concept of the doors and the point where Nadia and Saeed went through the door was where the book became less strong. I liked the authenticity of the writing in the first part, but as soon as we got to the teleporting portals that was lost. The descriptions of life in the post-portal world were believable, but the story never regained its momentum after that. I wasn't sure what point was being made - I felt like there must be some profound metaphor underlying the text that I was too dim to see.
Hamid missed an opportunity here. He could have taken his sympathetic Middle Eastern couple and given them a realistic journey to Europe - people smugglers, sinking boats, nations putting up fences etc. I am certain he would have done it in a very believable and hard hitting way that might have given us more insight into the horrible plight of people trying to access Europe that way and all the dangers they face. Giving characters the chance to just open a door and walk through to a safe European country feels like dodging the harsh reality.
Overall it was a well written book that I enjoyed reading but I don't think it will stick in my memory. If anything, I feel puzzled by it. I'll certainly read more of his books, but this one needed a stronger plot structure.


Hamid has deliberately avoided the obvious route of encapsulating the refugee experience, that of escape and journey. Instead he has chosen to focus on the state of displacement, of arrival, of the sense of detachment, unfamiliarity, intolerance and unacceptance.
The lives of Nadia and Saeed are enmeshed so tightly as they embark on their reluctant escape from a war torn, violent unnamed Middle Eastern city. But their journey is through a medium of doors...portals to destinations.
From the refugee camps of Mykonos to a bizzare, Dystopian almost Orwellian London - divided into Dark London (migrant and refugee) and Light London, purpose built satellite refugee encampments, and on to a new world on San Francisco's Pacific coast.
Hamid reveals much of the psychological impact displacement, loss of home and family, uncertainty and the need for companionship the refugee experience must entail. But he focuses primarily on the relationship, the strain such displacement places on the seemingly unbreakable bonds between people.
At times a little disjointed, at times a little confusing, but overall a challenging and different insight into a troubled world and the displaced millions that have been forced to choose to inhabit it.


Despite feeling a little lost at first, trying to locate the events, I liked that this is not about a journey travelling across geographical areas, but through the lives of people.
It took me a few (confused) pages to work out the move to anticipated events but I would definitely recommend Exit West as a thought-provoking read to anyone interested in life stories.