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Exit West: A Novel Hardcover – March 7, 2017

by Mohsin Hamid (Author)

727 customer reviews

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WINNER OF THE 2018 LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR FICTION and THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE

TEN BEST BOOKS OF 2017, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“A breathtaking novel…[that] arrives at an urgent time.” –NPR

“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… At once terrifying and … oddly hopeful.” –Ayelet Waldman, The New York Times Book Review

“Moving, audacious, and indelibly human.” –Entertainment Weekly, “A” rating

A New York Times bestseller, the astonishingly visionary love story that imagines the forces that drive ordinary people from their homes into the uncertain embrace of new lands.

In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors—doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through. . . .

Exit West follows these remarkable characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time.

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From the Publisher

Exit West: A Novel

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Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of March 2017: When Nadia and Saeed fall in love in a distant unnamed city, they are just like any other young couple. But soon bullets begin to fly, fighter jets streak the sky, and curfews fall. As the spell of violence spreads, they flee their country, leaving behind their loved ones. Early in Exit West, the author Mohsin Hamid explains that geography is destiny, and in the case of his two young lovers, geography dictates that they must leave. Hamid offers up a fantastical device to deliver his refugees to places: they pass through magic doors. Rather than unmooring the story from reality, this device, as well as a few other fantastical touches, makes the book more poignant and focused, pointing our attention to the emotions of exile rather than the mechanics. Surrounded by other refugees, Nadia and Saeed try to establish their places in the world, putting up different responses to their circumstances. The result is a novel that is personal, not pedantic, an intimate human story about an experience shared by countless people of the world, one that most Americans just witness on television. --Chris Schluep , The Amazon Book Review

From School Library Journal

A young couple meet and fall in love as their city disintegrates into violence in this spare, allegorical novel. Nadia is a free spirit who lives independently, while Saeed is faithful to the traditions of family and prayer. Any semblance of normal life, to say nothing of courtship, is obliterated by the danger surrounding them, so Nadia and Saeed decide they must find a way to escape. They learn of doors, fantastical portals that defy the laws of physics and grant passage to distant locations. It seems a stroke of great fortune when Nadia and Saeed access a door that takes them to a Greek island. But the respite is illusory. The world's population is on the move, and desperate migrants like Nadia and Saeed are swarming through doors in overwhelming numbers. The pair's love is tested as they ponder strategies for survival. Should they stay, or find another door? Hamid describes with fluid insight the displaced lovers' despair and longing for stability. His use of contemporary details such as cell phone dependence will remind readers that Nadia and Saeed are but a few steps removed from any college-age couple fleeing a homeland at war. VERDICT This short but potent work offers teens a visceral understanding of the world's refugee crisis. Those who are aware of the current political climate regarding immigration will be moved by this poignant love story.—Diane Colson, formerly at City College, Gainesville, FL

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Product details

Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Riverhead Books; First Edition edition (March 7, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0735212171
ISBN-13: 978-0735212176
Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 8.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 727 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,873 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #89 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Historical > Cultural Heritage
- #129 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Political
- #1179 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

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William Capodanno

Astonishing and Timely Novel About the Refugee Experience

January 7, 2018

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

The world needs novels like "Exit West", exceptionally well-written stories that tackle timely issues in a unique and compelling way. The story centers on Nadia and Saeed, two young individuals that fall in love despite religious and societal norms conspiring against them. The story is set in an unnamed country, but conjured up mental images of somewhere like Syria, Pakistan or even India. Their relationship begins to flourish just as civil unrest builds in their country, forcing them to flee as refugees.

The brilliant bit of magical realism that Hamid creates are teleportation doors that transport individuals from one country to another. As potential migrants hear about these doors, they become more difficult to escape through, guarded by the power structures. The more desirous the location, the harder it becomes to escape. The story of the refugee experience is brilliantly captured as the two lovers wind up in an upscale mansion in London overtaken by other refugees, many from Africa, along with their sojourn to Northern CA in Marin County. We come to see the characters undergo the pain and struggle of dislocation from friends, family and familiar surroundings while struggling to survive in foreign places where they are generally unwelcome. Each of them copes with the situation in different ways, creating tension in their relationship with each other.

This is an absolutely astonishing book of love and loss, hope and failure, hate and acceptance. It is rightly hailed as one of the best books of 2017 and should be on everyone's must read list. It will undoubtedly become one of the best books of the decade.

26 people found this helpful

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TejasPenguin

New literature that will stand the test of time

March 14, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Once in a while I come across a novel that makes me wish I were teaching again, a novel that begs for questions and discussion. This is one of those novels. Its brevity belies its complexity. Its characters -- main, minor, fleeting, and implied -- represent humanity as it is today. Its premise, while fanciful, creates the opportunity for readers to wonder if we have the courage to radically change how we view others and the world in which we all live. I read in a review that this is a hopeful novel and initially I was suspicious that a novel centering on the plight of innocent refugees fleeing violence and death could ultimately proffer a hopeful message. But hope there is despite the literal impossibility of its central plot device. The doors are a metaphor; do we have the courage to open them to those with the courage to walk through? Told in a spare but descriptive narrative, Mr. Hamid challenges his readers to open their minds to the possibilities that the future holds.

235 people found this helpful

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March 2, 2017

Format: Kindle Edition

Exit West is one of those novels that I’m still puzzling over, some time after finishing it. The author makes some interesting choices in terms of technique. So this review is really my reflections up to now rather than a settled opinion.

First, Exit West is narrated by an omniscient narrator with a cool, detached voice. This adds to the sense that the events it describes are normal, unsurprising. It tells the story of Saeed and Nadia, who live in an unnamed city in a country on the brink of civil war.

Saeed has light stubble and Nadia wears a black robe, at a time when people could still choose what to wear, ‘so these choices meant something’. They become involved and in contrast to their appearances, it is Nadia who has broken with expectations by living independently, estranged from her family, while Saeed still lives at home.

At first they do the things new couples do. They text incessantly. They use recreational drugs by moonlight. They listen to music and negotiate their attitudes to sex. But the civil war takes first their freedom and then their safety. It seems like the only option is to escape.

Saeed and Nadia leave through one of the ‘doors’ by which refugees leave war zones, generally after handing over money to traffickers. The ‘doors’ open and close apparently randomly, offering an abrupt dislocation from one place to another. It suggests something magical, without human agency, while the reality is anything but.

While Saeed and Nadia’s home city is unnamed, the events described feel contemporary and real. However the places where they go after they leave, which are named, known locations, are subtly different, as if we’re looking at a possible future or an alternate reality. They are in social upheaval, they are more segregated, even less hopeful than they are now.

Then there are vignettes throughout the book interrupting the main narrative, showing immigrants and refugees in other regions suddenly appearing through doors, as if to remind us that this is happening everywhere, all the time.

Saeed and Nadia are well realised characters, at once unique and recognisable. As they leave their home the narrative fragments and their stories become less absorbing. It is as if in becoming refugees, whose main preoccupation is survival, whose choices are circumscribed, they have less time to be psychologically complex and interesting, not only to a reader but perhaps to themselves.

So while the story didn’t engage me throughout the book, the ideas did, and still do. Exit West challenges you to think in new ways about a familiar issue, to question what you understand when you see generic terms like refugee or migrant applied to millions of individuals, who each has their home, their emotional life, their door, and has to make the decision to take that chance, or not, while they can.
*
I received a copy of Exit West from the publisher via Netgalley.

200 people found this helpful

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Mary E. Linford

Riveting, mysterious and timely

March 20, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I can't recall if I've ever written a book review but since this is a new book and I thoroughly enjoyed it, here goes.
I heard an interview of the author on NPR and thought it sounded interesting, especially how the author used the doors less in a science fiction way, but more of a way to shorthand the mechanics of travel and get to the result of mass immigration and refugee scenarios. It is a play on the connectivity to the world we all have with social media and globalization, and yet how fragile those threads really are. I would love to see this book read widely to facilitate a conversation about what it means to be "native" vs "immigrant" and how we perceive humanity through those lenses. Towards the end there is an amazing chapter of an elderly woman native to California that is so insightful it could be a stand alone short story.
Lovely book, thought provoking and hopeful despite the odds.

25 people found this helpful

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Most recent customer reviews

A quick read about the changing relationships people have with others during their lives. Interesting views of the different places they live in and the way life can change.Read more

Published 2 days ago

Stacey Lesser

A Dystopian Exile Tale

This was a great book. A terrific read and very provocative story.

Published 2 days ago

Carolyn Mahoney

This is an interesting and complicated novel. It is ...

This is an interesting and complicated novel. It is a fictional and complex tale of immigration paired with a relationship between a young couple.

Published 2 days ago

Sara K. Kantorik

Magical realism?

I enjoyed this book- it was well written and conveys the feeling of another world and another culture, as well as the last days of peace before society collapses.Read more

Published 2 days ago

bronia

Hoped that it would get better, but it did not

Could not finish it. Hoped that it would get better, but it did not. Repetitive and badly written.

Enlightening view of immigrant struggles opened my eyes to see it through their eyes and experiences, as well as the pressures on the family

Published 4 days ago

Reader

A good example of Deus ex Machina in literature

This book has a fascinating premise and the prose was often quite beautiful, albeit sometimes peppered with self-consciously experimental long sentences.Read more

Published 5 days ago

Fernando Chien

Beautiful journey

A wonderful journey of life through the contemporary world. One which spoke directly to me and that we will get through even if it doesn't follow the traditional steps we expect.

Published 6 days ago

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