Exit West

“The end of the world can be cozy at times.”
“Yes, like a cave.”

One of the best non-apocalyptic apocalypse fiction books I've read. A beautiful exploration of unique love where the unimaginable realities of our lives are interwoven with a fantastical element to everyday life. When insanity comes to town the impossibility of leaving makes itself possible, and the things that are meant to tear us apart bring us closer together.

The usual tropes of humanities' salvation in the face of it's demise are set aside but ultimately illuminated in heartfelt illustrations of everyday people.

Spoilers aheadThis book reminded me of [b:Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow 58784475 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow Gabrielle Zevin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1636978687l/58784475.SY75.jpg 89167797] by Gabrielle Zevin. Both have potentially good stories but struggle to engage due to their beautiful prose, which, unfortunately, makes it hard to connect with the characters.As I started reading, I was moved by the story of love and connection in times of war. It reminded me of [b:As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow 57390604 As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow Zoulfa Katouh https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1642433141l/57390604.SX50.jpg 89844864] by Zoulfa Katouh. It provided a view into a hardship I've never experienced, helping me develop empathy for those who do and grow to care about the characters, hoping for a ‘happy ending' or at least a resolution to their pain.But similarly to [b:Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow 58784475 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow Gabrielle Zevin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1636978687l/58784475.SY75.jpg 89167797], it was a book of ‘nearly misses.' A story of converging and diverging, but never really touching. It left me feeling like I was robbed of something. This book doesn't make any promises, and it's not meant to soothe or satisfy you. It's an exhibit of humanity in all its pretty, ugly, and honest faces.As someone who generally needs either a deep connection to characters or unexpected plots to stay engaged, I found this book difficult to finish.The incongruity is that, as I read, I felt like I was listening to a piece of art. I recognize the beauty in how it's written, showing the full spectrum of experiences, following a story of hardship, and even imagining a world without frontiers. The societal and political implications were thought-provoking.But as the story moved forward in the timeline, sometimes randomly giving us peeks into other stories and sometimes jumping ahead years, days, or hours, it felt disorienting. I felt like I was on skates, trying to grab pieces of the story laid along my path, but only had time to take what was within my reach. I constantly felt like something was missing.I am really torn. I know I liked it and that it's a unique and beautiful book, but I also don't think it's for everyone. Like art, I'd compare it to an abstract piece. There are so many interpretations, and the structure is loose, letting each viewer make what they want of it. I think it succeeded in this, as evidenced by the varied sentiments in its reviews.My main struggle was wanting a happy resolution so badly that I forgot the story was meant to feel real. Not everyone can just get up and leave; leaving is a hard decision. We humans are inclined to choose safety, even if accompanied by misery, over risk and potential reward.Now, about the doors... I see that many people have issues with them since they change the story from a deep look into love in times of war to a political piece with space travel. I actually didn't hate it. Without it, I think it would have felt too close to [b:As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow 57390604 As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow Zoulfa Katouh https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1642433141l/57390604.SX50.jpg 89844864]. When the doors were introduced, while super confusing, eventually, when I got a better understanding, I found it refreshing. I liked seeing the political and societal connotations. I liked thinking dreamily about the possibilities but being brought back to reality.However, when they started travelling through these doors, I lost track of the conflict. It was much harder to understand what was going on, what kind of worldwide conflict developed, and how it was resolved. I eventually decided to ignore the context and stick to following the protagonists and their ‘almost' love story.Now, back to the protagonists. At some point, particularly after they start drifting apart, I wanted dialogue. An in-depth conversation. Not just being told about what they conversed about. I wanted a real heart-to-heart to expose all the guarded truths and hidden resentments. But alas, we didn't get that. Yeah, they smoked pot and told some truths, but there was so much kept inside. And it was frustrating. Like nearly climaxing but never tipping over. But again, this may have been intentional to expose the human nature of avoiding conflict and fearing resolution.However, after going through so much together and forming a bond through shared trauma, I expected them to be more honest with each other. I understand they felt trapped by their mutual expectations and the promise they made to their father. However, I thought that facing hardships, working in the camps, and struggling to find food, would strip their filters away. Their instinct for survival would kick in, prioritizing their energy for staying alive.Oh well. I'm frustrated and satisfied at the same time. In different ways. But torn, nonetheless.

The island was pretty safe, they were told, except when it was not, which made it like most places

I'm not quite sure how feel after finishing this book. First half was excellent, I was really invested in the story of Saeed and Nadia , second half left me feeling a bit cold and in the end, much to my dismay, I didn't really feel anything for Saeed & Nadia. I guess the message I am left with is the grass isn't always greener, but surely for these people some grass is better than no grass at all. Very strange,

Will probably think about it a lot. The nature of prayer. The gulf between those who pray and those who don't. The random blessings that are bestowed upon us by virtue of nothing more than the place of our birth. Beautifully written, but... Only 4 stars because I grew less and less invested in Nadia and Saeed as the story progressed and just contented myself more and more with the philosophical ruminations. Which is fine, but not what I was hoping for.

“Exit West” reads like a fable yet is merciless in its appraisal of contemporary politics, identity, technology — the entire clusterfuck, really, of what it means to be alive in the 21st century. But the book is not without its heart and tenderness too, which is why I absolutely could not put it down.

So, so poorly written. For a book about a couple falling in love in some nameless, war-torn city who are then whisked to Greece by magic doors, this sure is a snore. No one should have to struggle with sentences containing 9 “ands.”

Unfortunately I think this is a case of ‘it's not you it's me'. I was not in the right head space for this - easily distracted, anxious (aren't we all) and generally sad with the state of the world. It was beautifully written with important messages around refugees and immigrants- but I couldn't connect- or maybe couldn't allow myself to connect.

Amazing book. Five stars not because of the content or premise per se, but most definitely because of the author's prose. I found myself often lingering on certain passages and reading them over and over again, wishing I had the skill to describe things in such a manner.

3.5 - This is a really beautiful and sad book. Our two protagonists, Saeed and Nadia, are young and (not quite) in love. Their relationship progresses in an increasingly unstable war zone. Routines and places and people they've always been surrounded by come to abrupt violent ends. Their only out is a gamble at best: there's increasing talk of doors that act as portals to other locations across the globe. After a certain point, they figure they have no choice but to try.This was certainly literary. A meandering plot with flowery phrasing and a bleak tone. But that's not inherently a problem, and Hamid's commentary on contemporary (aka post-globalization, in a digital age) migration is compelling. We look beyond the cruelties of isolationism and nativism, exploring its feasibility (low). With Nadia's robes, Hamid shows how people who see Islamic dress as gendered oppression are often the same people who harass and assault hijabis in public.Exit West reminds me of [b:Home Fire 33621427 Home Fire Kamila Shamsie https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1534180768l/33621427.SY75.jpg 54453872], [b:The Book Thief 19063 The Book Thief Markus Zusak https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1522157426l/19063.SY75.jpg 878368], and [b:Station Eleven 20170404 Station Eleven Emily St. John Mandel https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1451446835l/20170404.SY75.jpg 28098716]. It's like Home Fire in its London setting and use of personal relationships to explore immigration and political unrest. Both Exit West and The Book Thief look at how war causes instability and displacement even in people and places presumed too far away to be targeted. And reading it also felt like reading Station Eleven, both slow-moving dreamy marches through (post-)apocalyptic worlds, and what community and technology and faith all mean in this context. If you liked any of those three, I'd give Exit West a try. It's not a fun read, but it's timely and persuasive, and I'm glad I read it.

It's a nice, quick read. While I enjoyed it for the most part, it was a very sad story that just gets sadder as the it goes on.

I think there's some fuzziness to the novel's purpose that keeps it from being great–should borders be eliminated? should people stay put? should migrants always be welcomed with open arms?–but it certainly raises these important issues. The introduction of the magical realist element in an otherwise realistic story reminded me of The Underground Railroad.

[b:Exit West 30688435 Exit West Mohsin Hamid https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1477324680s/30688435.jpg 51234185]“We are all migrants through time.” Mohsin Hamid What a magnificent and magical novel! At a mere 240 pages, Exit West is jam-packed with beautiful, poetic and imaginative writing. Hamid is a magician of words and I was a guest on his magic carpet. The novel is about refugees, immigration, the loss of loved ones, adjusting to new environments, and much more. The story begins with Nadia and Saeed, both young and in love. Their country has become a dangerous war zone that is progressively getting worse. They learn of mystic, transportable doors, which can take them to faraway places. Nadia and Saeed decide to leave their war-torn country and travel through one of the portable doors. The story follows them as they live in different places all around the world. An interesting aspect is that Hamid weaves other characters who also go through the transportable doors throughout the novel, which I think is pretty genius. This novel is quite relevant to the current refugee crisis going on. This is one of those books that I was so glad that I had the audible narration for because listening to the author read his work makes it so much more magical. FIVE STARS all the way.

Very lyrical. Incredibly sad. A story as much about emotional migration as it is about the physical.

*4.5 This book. It really is a wonder. Such creativity and such a personal look at love and loss and what it means to be human. Regardless a few minor personal misgivings, this is a stellar novel of great importance.

Although fantasy elements act as a means to communicate a basic idea, the concept of migration and humans' desire for connection ring a message of “nothing stays the same except for everything.” At least that's what I thought.

I know this will be a very controversial review. I really did want to enjoy this book. However upon finishing it I feel very underwhelmed. Over a year ago I finished the reluctant fundamentalist and really enjoyed it but I had many issues with this book. I hated the writing style of this book. It made the reading experience pretty tedious. I hated the bits when the perspective would sporadically shift to some random person in a random location for a page and then go back to the main narrative. It made the feeling of certain chapters jarring and the shift was irrelevant to the wider plot. I wasn't invested in the relationship between Nadia and Saeed and so moments that were meant to be heartwarming and/or heartbreaking lacked sincerity for me. I think Mohsin Hamid can certainly write and some interesting points were raised in this book about emigration and identity. However I wasn't overly convinced about the device of the doors and so this book can only receive a run of the mill 3 out of 5 stars from me.

There. Is. Such. A. Thing. Called. Fullstops. Something that people use to keep sentences short and concise for the benefit of the reader's understanding, unlike what the author of this book did, that is, he rambled on and on about the every single event that happened in the period of a decade in precise details with the color of the carpet and the literary significance of it as well as the lunar cycles when things happened and the sentences just dragged on for so long that you don't even know what is going on or how your hair grew three inches since the beginning of this extremely long and seemingly endless sentence.

I still have the voice of the main character from Mohsin Hamid's previous book, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, in my head, an acculturated Westerner, seemingly, commenting rationally and thoughtfully on the world he has taken on, yet unexpectedly and searingly angry inside. But I nevertheless passed over this book for many months until it was on a kajillion end of the year best books lists, and I decided I had to read it.

What do I think about it? It reminds me of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go; I read many pages before realizing that this book is not realistic fiction. Like Never Let Me Go, I felt jarred by the intrusion of the science fiction elements.

I wasn't ever deeply invested in the relationship between the man and the woman, though I was taken with the woman's brave ventures out in a closed-off world. I liked how the author allowed the characters explore their native culture before war, their native culture after war, and an alien culture.

It won't be on my best of 2018 books, but it was completely fresh and it felt completely true and those are wonderful things for stories.

Short and unique! I can see why this is topping many of the best of 2017 lists, it's original. I fell in love Hamid's voice right away. The story reflects what is going on in our world today and I found myself looking to the book for possible answers. It's charming, heartbreaking, and hard to put down. That said, it did feel a little stalled about 3/4 of the way through and I found myself pushing to finish it. Other than that, it's a good read.

One of the most moving novels I have ever read. It is magical realist and moves like a short story, stopping only briefly for description since the raw emotions aroused by circumstances serves more as turning points.

Exit West is an impressively rendered, sensitive and timely novel. It tackles the issue of the refugee crisis in a way that feels remarkably current. There's a freshness to this story that is often lacking in other stories of this style. Given its subject and the ways it's skillfully depicted, I think this novel has a decent-to-good chance of taking this year's Man Booker Prize. But, in my opinion, it's lacking something, a result of taking a few shortcuts and arriving at its destination posthaste.

Exit West is the shortest of this year's nominees. Unfortunately, I think this is its greatest flaw. While the settings and language are all written in vivid detail, the characters and relationships suffer from the novel's brevity. Despite their strong potential as characters, Saeed and Nadia never seemed fully developed to me. There could've been another fifty pages exploring these characters, a hundred pages developing their stories; instead, their journey is presented in a story that takes only a few hours to read. The further their journey took Saeed and Nadia, the more distant I felt from them.

There's also a bit of disconnect in Hamid's device of using magical doors to journey from one country into another. I see the potential in the story for such a device. I see how it could also free up the author some. I'm not going to argue against the author's choice to use it. Personally, it just added a second level of disconnect. The stakes were not high enough. There was a sense that anytime things were about to get really bad, they could hop on a magical door and journey to some place that was a little better. If only this were true.

In most ways, I think Exit West was a great novel. Unfortunately, where it was lacking was perhaps the most significant: it was light on heart. I was mesmerized by the language, entranced by the scenery, and stimulated by the questions implied, but I never felt much for the characters themselves. And for a story which promises to be a love story, I'm not convinced they felt much for one another.


Man Booker Prize 2017:
Though this will not be my favorite amongst this year's nominees, I see Exit West as a potential winner. Its presentation of the migrant issue tied with its gorgeous prose and fast-moving plot make it a very strong contender. Of the book's I've read so far, this one has, in my opinion, the greatest likelihood of going all the way. I'll be surprised if it doesn't make the shortlist, but I've been surprised before.

A novel that speaks very much of our times. In a middle-eastern country of conflict, two young people fall in love. Magical portals open across the globe, allowing passage from one to another, leading to a new sort of mass migration. Yet nothing is simple, and there's chaos and policing, refugee camps, xenophobia and shortages wherever you go. Despite it all the book is very hopeful. The writing is simple and gentle and poetic. A fast read. Hamid uses the device of magical realism - the doors - way better than Whitehead has done with the railroad in [b:The Underground Railroad 30555488 The Underground Railroad Colson Whitehead https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1493178362s/30555488.jpg 48287641]. (Still peeved the railroad qualified that one as contender to win scifi prizes).

Another title which I'm seeing on many “best of 2017” lists. This one lived up to my expectations though. In one sense, it's a gritty examination of a city in an unnamed nation, to which war gradually creeps. Against this impending doom is the hopefulness of a new love relationship of a young man and woman. While I found the ebb and flow of their relationship as of secondary interest, it is a good frame for a war and a fantasy story.

I rate this novel highly as it falls right into the type of fantasy which I like the most - a world much like our own, but with an intriguing, not necessarily explained twist. In the world of this novel, ordinary doors inexplicably become portals transporting those who enter to suddenly exit through other doors throughout the world. These become the simple means to move refugees of war - specifically the two lovers - to new locations, first in refugee camps and eventually London and San Francisco.

The writing is poetic and almost lyrical at times as the author deftly juxtaposes the ugliness of war and the beauty of young, blossoming love. Aside from the engrossing writing, the most fascinating aspect of the alternate world for me is how these doors allow a new mobility for people and consequently the new politics and social structures which result. As I mentioned in another review here, it makes for a world which is thought provoking and therefore one I'd like to explore further in a sequel.

So I'm confused about the book. I really liked the underlying theme but didn't like the writing style -
those long, never-ending sentences. I also felt there were some parts in the book that really could've been skipped. Like explaining Saeed's parents' life when the latter were young. I didn't understand the significance of that. I also ended up not liking both protagonists, Saeed and Nadia. Additionally I think the scenes of physical intimacy could have been toned down.

Mohsin Hamid writes in a clipped, declarative style. It's a matter of fact story of an unnamed place (loosely based on Lahore where Hamid was writing at the time) and the burgeoning love between Saeed and Nadia. Things are going from bad to worse in the city they live in. A civil war is breaking out and when doors open to other places they take a chance and slip through together.

The doors of Exit West are a wonderful bit of magical realism that keeps Hamid from getting mired in the narrative so often associated with migrants and their crossing of borders, walking long distances over a barren landscape or freezing in a leaky inflatable. It let's him talk about how Saeed and Nadia's lives change in new worlds.

Saeed clings to the home he left behind while Nadia reaches for the promise of the new. In an interview Hamid talks about the short vignettes interspersed throughout that show we're all migrants in a sense, even if it's migrants through time. That the worlds we grew up in change around us even if we never leave our childhood neighbourhood. A beautiful story well rendered.