Exit West

The writer's style makes this book a quick and easy read. That's how things seem on the surface. Two young people, Nadia and Saeed, escape their war-torn country through the use of 'doors' that instantaneously transport a person from one country to another. The author does not explain how the doors came into being, just that at some point they began appearing and people began using them. An uncontrollable mass-migration begins as people attempt to escape war, poverty or just want a better life. Through this premise, Hamid explores notions of racism, nationalism, cultural clashes and religion. Most of this is done through relating the experiences of Nadia and Saeed as we see how their relationship alters as they travel through a rapidly changing world. This book is a reminder to keep the doors open.

I really, really wanted to like this book. I had felt like I found a book to capture something important about the state of the world. But "Exit West" by Mohsin Hamid is profoundly disappointing. Oddly written, poorly paced, and strangely distant, it takes what could have been a strong and interesting premise and buries it under an ersatz combination of cleverness, fable, and metaphor.

The story follows Nadia and Saeed, two young people who fall in love in an unnamed Middle Eastern city descending into civil war. They flee their city and head to the West where they live under siege like conditions in London and gradually grow apart in the United States and go along their own paths.

I feel that the first part in the unnamed city worked okay. It is when they left the city that the novel start falling off the rails. I believe the problem with the novel is that Hamid wanted to write something "universal" that could transcend the current moment. But in doing so, he wrote something that feels vapid and uninvolved. Everything is metaphorical and everyone is archetypal and therefore nothing has any value or weight. I did not feel for any character in the novel. All are one-dimensional, especially the leading characters. He tries to make the novel timeless but you cannot take it out of the context of the present moment. I think that this is was the fatal flaw of the book. Novels BECOME timeless but you cannot will a timeless novel into existence. It almost feels like a parody of a book attempting to be an "award winning novel."

There are moments of good prose but they are few and far between. I found myself by the end just wanting to get through the novel. This could have been very good but ultimately, I think it was a big misfire.