Book Review: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Those who have finished ‘Exit West’ by Mohsin Hamid may feel that this book is half-migrant literature, half-globalist. The author is not only interested in revealing how the human lives are changing by migration, but by how constant migration in-and-of itself leads to the blurring of location and nation-state construction. This assumption is evident by the constant interruptions in the lives of Nadia and Saeed. Can there be re-imagination of global identities in a denationalizing world vision? Somehow this novel could not convince this peculiarity.

May be the novel is built too much on concepts and not enough on character. Neither of the two characters seem to function or think outside of their movements and Hamid's occasional insights. Also, the lack of specificity of location. For a book with so many random places, readers were made to feel that they have to detach from one place to place, in a sense a backdrop is lost. The book sounds a piece of abstract writing. All of it seems so unreal, so rushed.

This book could have been a masterpiece if all the details, locations, and characters, had been firmly developed. At least it left behind an interesting experiment that deserved more.

The plot of this book is quite topical: immigration and the sense of identity. It is a relevant issue that is plaguing the world today…immigration of people from strife-ridden places to other countries and regions that hold promise of a new life: a life that is safe, idyllic, and nurturing. However, often the migrants underestimate the distrust, inhumanity and apathy that await them in their imagined future worlds. The story captured this worry, and how the migrants try to make sense of their fractured families, changed loves, and disrupted lives. The writer is fond of composing long, very long sentences that flit from here to there, often vaguely, but then, miraculously, just when the readers begin to lose the thread, gathers the words together to build a coherent sentence that captures, quite elegantly, what he sets out to achieve in the first place.

The first half was interesting then it became a story more about migration and yes there were too many doors. Too many countries covered from Europe to America. But overall the novel is good .The depiction of migration crisis and its impact on personal relationships was brought out well in the novel.

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