Exit West
by Mohsin Hamid
We are all migrants through time.
Why read it
As their city slides into civil war, two young lovers hear rumors of mysterious doors that open onto distant countries, and step through one to become migrants in a world where borders are collapsing everywhere at once.
Hamid tells a tender migration story with a single element of magical realism, doors that transport people across the globe in an instant, stripping away the journey to focus on what it means to leave and to arrive. It is a spare, luminous fable about love, displacement, and a planet in motion.
Published in 2017, Exit West was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and named one of the year's best books by numerous outlets. It was later selected for adaptation as a film.
- 01
The magic doors
What awaits is a conceit that erases the perilous crossing so the story can dwell on departure and arrival.
- 02
Love under pressure
Nadia and Saeed's relationship shifts and strains as displacement remakes who they are.
- 03
A world in migration
Brief vignettes around the globe reveal borders dissolving and populations mixing everywhere.
- 04
Home reimagined
The novel asks what home means when everyone, eventually, is from somewhere else.
Nadia and Saeed's first passage through a door, emerging disoriented on a Greek island crowded with refugees.
Their time in a London occupied by migrants, where nativist mobs and government forces threaten the newcomers.
