Exit West
Mohsin Hamid
I’m a sucker for long, meandering sentences as a stylistic flourish, and this book contains plenty of those. Mohsin Hamid maybe overdoes it with this technique, but I’m cool with it.
(Spoilers follow)
I think the book can be divided roughly into two halves. The first is a realistic look at life in an unnamed city as it falls under civil war. I guess it’s meant to evoke Syria but there may be further references beyond my ken. I found myself missing the specificity of time and place, and was carried through mainly by the romance between the main characters.
The second half kind of explains the vagueness of the first. Forced to flee their home, the couple travels through “doors,” literal portals that lead to other parts of the world. Unlike their origin, their destinations are named: Mykonos, London, Marin. They find themselves living amongst other refugees from all over the world.
The book rolls to a heartbreaking end as the relationship of the couple deteriorates under the pressure that all of the refugees face as a group. Despite their diverse backgrounds, the citizens of the West just see them as a single mass of unwelcome intruders. Their city was unnamed, because their identity is irrelevant to their opponents: it doesn’t matter where they came from.
