September 2021: Exit West (Hamid)

The plot of Exit West by Mohsin Hamid has a “ripped from the headlines” feel. In a developing country, two young people, Saeed and Nadia, meet and fall in love while their society slowly descends into civil war. Desperate for safety and a chance at a future together, they flee their lives and head to the West. As conflict, environmental disaster, and economic pressures compel millions of people to leave home, what story could be more timely?

Yet, despite this focus on a very contemporary issue, Exit West reads more like a fairy tale than a hard-hitting exposé. At the book’s heart is a pretty standard story of two people falling in love and facing the difficulties of sustaining a relationship. That aspect of the book could have been set almost in any time and place. In fact, it is not clear in exactly what time or place the novel is set. The young couple’s home country is never named; it could be any one of a number of Muslim countries. Although the references to technology imply the novel is set in the present day or perhaps a few years ago, the couple flee to cities in the West that have been dramatically transformed by mass migration in ways that imply this is a vision of a possible future. Most significantly, in the book the means that the migrants use to travel to the West is radically different from our reality. In cities all over the world, certain doors have mysteriously become portals. If you find one of them, and if you are able to pay whoever is guarding it enough to let you use it, it can instantly transport you thousands of miles away. Thus, when our couple take that first disorienting leap into unknown, it is just that: a single leap. With one big step, they pass through a doorway that takes them from the war-ravaged streets of their hometown to a beach on the island of Mykonos in Greece.

In interviews, Hamid said that he added elements of magic realism to his book for very specific reasons. If he focused on the dangerous and challenging journeys that many migrants make, he worried, that would distance them from the reader’s experience. Most of us have not crossed the Mediterranean in a rubber boat, he points out. However, we all know what is like to go from one place to another and to feel lost, disoriented, and displaced. We all know how hard it can be to leave certain aspects of our lives behind and to try build a future with someone new.

So, even though the book is full of short vignettes about other migrants and about some of the people they interact with, the heart of the book is always its central couple, so much so that Saeed and Nadia are the only characters who are given names. Hamid wanted us to be struck by the humanity of these two people and by the universal nature of the challenges they face. After all, Exit West reminds us, global migration is as old as humanity itself. So, if we are to avoid a massive humanitarian failure, we must accept the realities of modern mass migration and find humane and sustainable ways to accommodate it.

Most of the members of our book club enjoyed the book. We certainly got caught up in the story of the relationship between the two main characters, though there was a great diversity of opinions on whether the two of them were a good match. For the most part, we were pleased with Hamid’s ability to capture the gradual transformations that characterize many affairs of the heart.

A lot of us liked the fairy tale nature of the book, though it took a while for some of us to get used to it. For example, at first several of us were quite frustrated by the lack of detail about certain things. We eventually appreciated that this lack of information created a feeling of disorientation in the reader that complimented the themes in the book. We also saw how providing too many specific details might have detracted from the book’s focus on the universal nature of the migrants’ experiences. So, we understood Hamid’s choices in this regard, even when we were very curious to know more.

That being said, some members found Hamid’s writing style too annoying. In one interview, Hamid stated that he didn’t do any research for the book, relying instead on his imagination and on his memories of his childhood in Lahore, his many visits to Greek islands, and his experiences living in London and San Francisco (where Nadia and Saeed also live). Given the importance of the issues involved, one member commented, isn’t it worth providing more specifics about the challenges migrants face? Does it do them justice, for example, to replace an exploration of their often lengthy and harrowing journeys to the West, with the convenient device of the magic doors that instantly transport them to their destination?

Discussion of these issues lead us to talk about whether we thought this was a good choice for the Smith Reads program. Given the concerns just raised, we would certainly be horrified, if this was the only book that anyone read about migration. However, we could also see why the book might be a good choice for Smith students. Saeed and Nadia are both appealing and well-developed characters, and we suspect that first year students would find it easy to talk about their relationship and the decisions that the couple make. Furthermore, someone noted, the novel’s magic portals might be a thought-provoking metaphor for many students, one that encourages them to compare their own experiences to those of migrants in interesting and productive ways. After all, wasn’t that first week at Smith kind of like stepping through a door and suddenly finding yourself dropped into a new life, one that you hoped would lead to a safe and rewarding future? If so, then Exit West, is not a bad companion to take with you on this new adventure.