Exit West by Mohsin Hamid - A Review

I first heard of Mohsin Hamid when the adapted movie for The Reluctant Fundamentalist came out. I had wanted to get my hands on a copy of his book since then, and Exit West is my first go at his work. 

You have probably heard of Exit West already. The book has garnered critical acclaim for portraying what really goes through a refugee’s mind. Everyone from The Guardian to Vox has covered it.

Exit West begins, simply enough, as a love story between Nadia and Saeed. Hamid makes even a simple love story so profound: “Every time a couple moves they begin, if their attention is still drawn to one another, to see each other differently, for personalities are not a single immutable color, like white or blue, but rather illuminated screens, and the shades we reflect depend much on what is around us.” Nadia who appears to be an orthodox Muslim at first (due to her niqab), then reveals she wears it so men don’t mess with her (Pg-13 version of those words anyway). 

Saeed and Nadia are shown to spend increasing amounts of time with one another as their unnamed, probably Middle Eastern country dissolves into chaos. Their reliance on each other – physical, mental, social continue to increase. Exit West is also set in an alternate reality, where a certain type of door appears that leads one to a completely different country. These doors are means of escape for the people in the war-torn country. Eventually, Nadia and Saeed decide to take one of these doors to a better place.

Nadia and Saeed don’t actually leave their country till halfway into the book, and therefore the first half deals with all their thoughts and emotions dealing with leaving their country and loved ones. As one of the quotes in the book goes: “when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind”. It shows those who do not understand, that leaving one’s home isn’t a swift decision, rather one that is taken when all other options have run out. 

The second half of the novel deals with the arrival part of the migration, having used the doors to land in of the Greek islands from where Saeed and Nadia take a door that leads them to London where Hamid shows in his beautifully lyrical writing is coming to resemble their home country as well.

“Thus in the end their relationship did in some senses come to resemble that of siblings, in that friendship was its strongest element, and unlike many passions, theirs managed to cool slowly, without curdling into its reverse, anger, except intermittently. Of this, in later years, both were glad, and both would also wonder if this meant that they had made a mistake, that if they had but waited and watched their relationship would have flowered again, and so their memories took on potential, which is of course how our greatest nostalgias are born.”

Saeed and Nadia could be anyone who reads this timely novel. What course would their relationship have taken in a different setting? What would it be like having the basic instinct for survival trump all other needs? 

But don’t expect to read Exit West hoping to be moved to tears. Hamid has written this in a very matter-of-fact way, that while the reader is privy to every thought that goes through Nadia and Saeed, the reader’s opinions of what might be happenings is not important. However, some of the sentences in the book manage to pierce your heart.

This is a must-read novel. Especially in today’s circumstances, as everyone seems to say. Exit West is the account of the struggle that refugees go through in order to take that perilous journey in the real world. Hamid’s elegant prose makes it all too real, in a necessary way.

Buy the book on Flipkart here: http://bit.ly/2poIWrX