Exit West: A Novel
SynopsisPlot
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. . . .
Story
About this book
Nadia and Saeed meet in an unnamed city sliding toward civil war. Nadia is independent and sensual; Saeed is quieter and more reserved. Their relationship begins in secret, but as the conflict around them worsens, ordinary life contracts. Checkpoints and bomb blasts replace familiar streets, and the couple finds themselves pressed into a closeness that arrived faster than either expected.
Rumors spread through the city about mysterious doors, portals that can carry people to distant places for a price and at considerable risk. When staying is no longer possible, Nadia and Saeed step through one of these doors and leave their country behind. The novel follows them into unfamiliar cities, where they try to build new lives as displaced people. Their bond, formed under pressure, is tested by the different people they gradually become.
Mohsin Hamid, a Pakistani-born writer, uses the door device to compress the physical ordeals of migration into a single fantastic step. This lets the story concentrate on what comes after arrival: the slow work of deciding who you are when the places that once defined you are gone.
