Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Exit West

by Mohsin Hamid

"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. [This book] follows the couple 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."--From regular print book.

Reviewed by nannah on

3 of 5 stars

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Hmm. I’m not quite sure what to make of this book. I might just not be the type of person who can appreciate it fully, but I was left rather baffled by the whole thing.

Content warnings:
- sexual harassment

Representation:
- the main characters are all from an unnamed West or South Asian country (someone said it felt a lot like Pakistan)
- one of the main characters (Nadia) is bi

Exit West is a story about immigration and about the life of one couple during the hardship and terror of war. About what all that does to a relationship and what that does to people and societies as a whole.

It’s beautiful and thought provoking. But I struggled to connect with the characters and their personal story because of the writing style. I’m not trying to be pretentious, and I know the style and its (mis)use of grammar is fully intentional, but reading wordy run-on sentences over and over and over gets exhausting really fast. There’s even one page that consists of a single run-on sentence containing 60 commas (as one reviewer counted).

The writing is also very detached, telling everything and showing almost nothing. We’re told what the characters feel, but there’s no feeling it, no experiencing anything in real time. It’s like reading events from an encyclopedia or wikipedia entry. The story is a good one, but I could never feel it or get absorbed by it.

What I did love were the magical realism elements. It really added a beautiful and almost uplifting element to an otherwise somber story. And the writing style isn’t bad; the author is clearly very talented. It’s just not my thing. This book is still definitely worth reading … but maybe just once.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 7 March, 2021: Finished reading
  • 7 March, 2021: Reviewed