Exit West

Description

By Mohsin Hamid

In an unnamed city sliding into civil war, Nadia and Saeed meet in an evening class: she is fiercely independent and rides a motorcycle, he is careful and lives with his parents. Their affair is forced into a premature intimacy by the checkpoints and the shelling.

Then people start whispering about doors, ordinary doors that open somewhere else entirely, if you can pay and if you are willing to take the risk. Nadia and Saeed go through one, and then another, and the novel becomes about what migration does to two people who love each other.

First published 2017