The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

UK Edition
Publication Date: March 2, 2017


US Edition
Publication Date: March 7, 2017

Exit West is a strange fruit.

Set in an unnamed city in an unnamed country, Saeed and Nadia fall in love. Both are middle class, employed and have good lives, stretching the boundaries of what is permissible in a conservative society. They have access to satellite TV, internet, smartphones and transport. They have everything that they could want in a material sense. But we are told from the outset that the city is on the brink of a ten-year war. As Saeed and Nadia become closer and closer, their city and their lives crumble around them. The communications networks fail, their employment evaporates, their families fragment. With nothing left, they exit west. They land up in a world that doesn’t want them and they don’t much want it.

The writing style is breathtaking. It is lucid but poetic, reading almost like a folk tale. There are often references in the past tense to Saeed and Nadia’s destiny, as though written in the far future looking back on contemporary society – with the references to smartphones making it clear that the story is set firmly in the present day. The setting is an enigma. For the first half of the book, the time is now but the location is unclear. The reader may say Syria, but it is never specific. But in the second half of the novel, the locations are clear but the time is more vague; we find a Europe awash with refugees from all over the world (some of whom are white); shanty towns spring up; the army impose containment and surveillance techniques. Perhaps it is a prophecy of a near future or perhaps it is hyperbole for literary effect. The effect of this, though, is to shake the reader’s certainty that Saeed and Nadia are from Syria; they could come from almost anywhere.

The novel strikes a rich balance between the global upheaval and the personal loves and tragedies of Saeed and Nadia. The young lovers are imperfect, but very human. They are not just faceless numbers, they are individuals with education, aspirations and something to offer the world. Their struggle is matched by those around them, and those we see in our lives every day. The people we may perceive to be threatening may well feel frightened and threatened themselves. They will certainly be feeling dislocated. And unlike those western migrants who bounce back and forth between developed nations, the refugees don’t have the option of returning home any time soon, even if home as they knew it might still exist.

To add to the wider perspective, each chapter includes a vignette from another country showing various degrees of upheaval, instability or general uneasiness.

One particularly striking feature of Exit West is the lack of narrative of the physical process of migration. It is portrayed as going through a door from one society to another. This is jarring when first encountered, but as a literary device it allows the focus to be on people in their old lives and their new lives without the attention being diverted to the short and daring journey itself. The device adds to heavy stylisation of the novel where time and location have a dreamlike quality.

Exit West is an important and timely novel. It doesn’t offer easy answers; if anything, it actually justifies the feeling of resistance of the nations in which the refugees land up. There are no winners; there is simply a world of pain caused when nations fragment. Mohsin Hamid gives the reader much to ponder, written in the most beautiful and beguiling language.

*****

I feel Exit West, Underground Railroad (and The Power) are similar.

All employ a fantastical device (the teleport, the railroad, the Skein) to examine a topical political issue (emigration, women's rights, black rights).

In all three cases I enjoyed the device and the examination of the topic it allowed (the macro concept) more than the actual writing (the micro execution)

Looking forward to reading this soon based on Mister Hobgoblins review in here.

Also for Australian readers it got a really good discussion and review on the ABCs " The Book Club" show.

Reading this one now and I'm about halfway through. I really like the writing style and the elements of magical realism (only one I can think of are the doors), I think this is gonna be a good one!

Mixed reactions. I liked the topical plot and the way it was executed but I did not like the writing style at all. Here's my GR review:

Exit West is a novel I admire more than actually like. Without a doubt it is clever. Although the story is about attitudes towards migrants, Hamid goes a step further and adds a magical realist element by allowing migrants to pass to other countries through magical doors which crop up. The book also is about a young couple trying to survive their war torn country and then when the couple find a doorway they try to survive adapting to their country's traditions.

As the couple are coping, their relationship develops as well. Hamid manages to integrate this love story without becoming overly melodramatic. In fact the whole book itself is tasteful yet manages to drive the point that, essentially, we are all migrants in some way or another. Definitely a prescient novel.

There's a lot to dwell on, but the thing that ruined the book is Hamid's writing style. I felt that Exist West read like a badly translated novel. Although there isn't cliched dialogue (thank goodness), the writing style is dull. Both the characters Saaed and Nadia had a ton of potential but the flat prose renders them into one dimensional characters. With such a rich plot, it is disappointing to see that the style doesn't really match. However I am thinking about Exit West and the strength of the themes and how they do reflect 21st century society so there is some merit I guess.

Gumble's Yard wrote: "I feel Exit West, Underground Railroad (and The Power) are similar.

All employ a fantastical device (the teleport, the railroad, the Skein) to examine a topical political issue (emigration, women..."

Very interesting observation.

Also when books do this there tends to be a spectrum from those at the more sci-fi end that explore exactly how said device works and all the logical implications, and those more at the fable end that simply treat the device as is.

I would put China Miéville, say, at the first end and Jose Saramago, say, at the other. No prizes for guessing which approach I prefer given I failed to even finish City and the City and have read 21 books by Saramago! I.e. I prefer books that focus more on making wider points than worrying too much about the details.

The Power for me strayed a little too far to the sci-fi end - where do Underground Railway and Exit West fit?

Exit West I think could have been a Saramago concept other than its copious use of punctuation. Both are at the Saramago end on your scale but not sure you will like either.

My one problem with Exit West was the feeling that the author had a limited number of periods to use. Seriously, the sentence doesn't need to be that long!

Aside from that, I thought it was very clever, from the way the doors change the migrant question and the natives' reactions to migrants, to the way Saeed and Nadia's relationship developped as they got further from home, to the little asides to people in different countries. Not sure if I'd shortlist this book but still really good!

He uses an awful lot more punctuation than Jose Saramago and Solar Bones is one single sentence.

Move over Reservoir 13 - you have competition at the top.

As Gumble predicted to me, I loved this Saramago-like novel.

Three important quotes for me (one from the book, one from the author and one from the definitive study of migration ethics) sum it up:

Location, location, location, the estate agents say. Geography is destiny, respond the historians.
from Exit West

Citizenship in Western liberal democracies is the modern equivalent to feudal privilege—an inherited status that greatly enhances one's life chances.
Joseph Carens, The Ethics of Immigration

Part of the great political crisis we face in the world today is a failure to imagine plausible desirable futures. We are surrounded by nostalgic visions, violently nostalgic visions.
Mohsin Hamid, New Yorker interview

His device of the doors allows him to anticipate the inevitable mass waves of migration over the next decades and to imagine just such a plausible desirable future.

I wasn't a big fan of this book. Unlike Robert I thought the language was beautiful, but I did not think the story worked. If the focus had been on the love story between Nadia and Saeed it would have been a decent book, but their story didn't seem believable to me in the war setting.

The story moves very quickly, it seems we rarely get the chance to see the characters react to what's happening around them. They just keep moving forwards, not changing much. I would expect to see a lot more character development in a book where the main characters go through as much as they do in this book.

It might just be that my preference for character driven books wasn't met in this book which seemed more plot driven (though it sometimes feels more like a character driven book because of the somewhat subdued writing - if subdued is the right word, english is not my native language). Either way it won't be on my shortlist.

Well, that was a surprise. I fully expected to hate this one, but I've just given it 5 stars. So many levels to explore. So many issues raised. It's going quite near the top of my longlist ranking.

You may need to change your p word! Glad you liked it

Gumble's Yard wrote: "You may need to change your p word! Glad you liked it"

True - I'd forgotten about that. I was genuinely surprised by how much I liked this one. I got sucked into it and read it all in one go (it's not a long book). There's a possibility that means my 5-stars is an over-reaction, but it's definitely more than 4.5.

In fact, it wasn't until I wrote my review that I realised quite how much I had liked it.

Maybe we are back to "powerful".

An interesting angle for me the first time I read it was how the book switched from a dystopian view to an almost a utopian view of how mass immigration could play out.

From Paul's quotes above it seems this was very deliberate on the author's behalf as an attempt to imagine a plausible desirable future rather than the violently nostalgic view which appears to drive Trump, Brexit/May and even Corbynism.

Brief update: I think I got over-excited with my 5 stars. It was an over-compensation from expecting to give it 1-star and then really enjoying it! On reflection, 4 stars is a better rating.

Neil wrote: "Brief update: I think I got over-excited with my 5 stars. It was an over-compensation from expecting to give it 1-star and then really enjoying it! On reflection, 4 stars is a better rating."
Neil's updating of his 5 stars makes me wonder again about what I think of as my own "recency bias"—giving higher ratings to those novels that I have most recently read.

It's true. I review my ratings every few months and they sometimes go down, but never up.

"recency bias" enters my lexicon as of now!!

While the immigrant subject is important, I simply found this book dull... The third person narration didn't work for me, and it had it's focus more on the immigrant agenda than telling a story - anyhow had it been 100 pages longer it would probably had been a dnf for me, I found myself counting out the % I had read to pace myself to finish it.

Maybe I was expecting too much after reading Neil's glowing review, but the truth is that I didn't get on with this book, perhaps because outright fantasy has never appealed to me. There were elements I liked - the central love story and the description of the effects of war and extremism on Saeed and Nadia's city, but for me Hamid shows too little interest in the practical problems his scenario would create - how are such huge numbers kept from starvation and could a western economy survive without functional cities? Perhaps I am taking it all too literally, but for me there are too many better books on this longlist for me to support this one...

Hugh, my review went slightly over the top because I was so convinced I would hate it that when I actually liked it I sort of over-reacted a bit!

That said, I think a lot hinges on how you react to the concept of the doors and too the writing style. I found the doors to be an effective device that allowed the author to concentrate on other topics. I can see how others would react differently. And whilst I disliked the writing style when I read a Kindle sample a few months ago, I found myself enjoying it when I read the longer complete book.

I can understand how this could be loved or hated. Or mixed, even.

I liked the writing style too - one of the reasons I found it so hard to get the tone of the review right!

Hugh wrote: "...Hamid shows too little interest in the practical problems his scenario would create - how are such huge numbers kept from starvation..."

I suspect he would reply "more easily than in the countries - racked by war, climate change etc - they came from" i.e. the migration part solves not creates the problem.

He does have the idea of using the green belt around the M25 for new settlements built by the migrating people themselves.

But it isn't science fiction in the sense he works through the implications of all his ideas - which is both a strength but a weakness. Gumble called it well as being very Saramago like - and he won the Nobel for books like this, so the Booker should be an easy reach.

I suppose my criticism is that as a western liberal who is very sympathetic to the plight of migrants, I don't see wholesale transplantation of populations as a solution - I have no problem at all in accepting that there are terrible injustices in the world.

I accept much of what you are saying, I was just trying to explain why I felt uneasy about it. The comparison with Saramago is an interesting one though - you are right that I have been much more sympathetic to his visions, but he does cover more of the practical implications of his absurd premises, though he is equally blind to certain economic realities...

Does he though Saramago with the practical side? The entire world goes blind and he focuses on a small group of people, or Portugal detaches itself without wiping out New York or London with a mass tidal wave.

And on immigration, I think Hamid's point is - why shouldn't all these people come here and if that causes problems in your county welcome to their world.

I rather share the view of The Ethics of Immigration:

Citizenship in Western liberal democracies is the modern equivalent to feudal privilege—an inherited status that greatly enhances one's life chances.

Yes, I agree that Saramago can also be rather selective - he is more interested in political machinations than in industry or economics, but some of the details he does discuss are very interesting...

I'd agree that - albeit within a narrow scope - Saramago does tend to pursue the ideas in detail to their logical ends, and that Hamid does fail to do this and rather brushes over the consequences (brushing over the mechanics ie the doors is much more forgivable - as this is a 'what if' book).

The discussion on here whether the doors are a good plot device or not and how this novel could best be qualified (sience fiction, fantasy, dystopian/utopian) is really fascinating! I'd like to make one more attempt to come to terms with that aspect of the book:

This book reminds me of a fairy tale, in as far as it describes a curious incident involving fantastical elements - the sudden appearance of magic doors all over the world that allow people to move to other countries without passing border controls - connected to a moral. Another aspect that brings the story close to a fairy tale is that time and place remain vague, with the protagonists Nadia and Saeed living in and finally fleeing an unspecified country that stands emblematically for the many war-torn areas in the Southern hemisphere . And for the romantics among you: Yes, there’s also a fairy tale-ending (well, at least there’s a definite improvement). :-)

I think these connections to the set-up of a fairy tale are pretty interesting, because they highlight that Hamid wanted to write an accessible tale that makes a moral point by appealing to universal human sentiments, a story that could also come from an oral tradition or be a folk tale (the people in the book always “hear” about the doors from other people).That he takes this approach with a subject as complex as migration and still manages to avoid portraying and discussing it in a simplistic manner is a remarkable achievement. Even the book’s language is extremely accessible and Hamid completely relies on his content to make his text interesting (so in a way, this book is reversing the principles of Solar Bones, which is also an amazing book).

I agree with those readers who maintain that the story fails to answer some major questions like “Where do these magic doors even come from?”, but I think just like a fairy tale, this story expects you to simply accept the fantastical elements – who would ask how the wolf managed to dress up a like a grannie in “Little Red Riding Hood”? Hamid aims to discuss the reasons for and consequences of worldwide migration, and to focus on that, he found plot devices to block out whatever might distract from that.

That is all very well put.

Yes, thanks Meike. To some extent I was playing devil's advocate and the book is doing very well without my support.

One of the things I love about this forum is the way different people like to focus on different elements - is it the plot, the writing, the message or the characterisation or the innovation that is most important - and that this seems very important to the way they rate them.

Meike wrote: "The discussion on here whether the doors are a good plot device or not and how this novel could best be qualified (sience fiction, fantasy, dystopian/utopian) is really fascinating! I'd like to mak..."

I like reading this!

I think that questioning the existence of doors is not essential to the plot - after all didn't doors appear out of nowhere in Alice in Wonderland? I saw them as a metaphor for escape.

Thanks to all of you! Just as Hugh, I really enjoy reading how a text affects people in different ways, what they see as important and how they explain the decisions the author made.

Robert, I also think that the doors could be seen as a metaphor for escape, maybe even for globalisation...

I was looking forward to reading this because I enjoyed both The Reluctant Fundamentalist and, to a lesser degree, How To Get Filth Rich in Rising Asia. I seem to be in the distinct minority in finding the writing, plot and ideas shallow. The only element I thought successful was the development of the two main characters.

As I've said previously on this board, I've spent much of the last year reading dozens of novels translated recently from Arabic to English. While certainly not representative of all Muslim cultures, it did give me a wide cross-section of young characters raised Muslim in a wide range of countries. Saeed is a nuanced characterization of a young secular Muslim professional, living at home with his parents. Home Fire has two young British males with Pakistani-Muslim heritage. Those two fit stereotypes that occur frequently: the disaffected sensitive and lost boy who is befriended by a radical militant who twists the boy to his ideology. The other is equally sensitive and lost, but has very wealthy parents who keep him in money and don't care that he has been racially neutered.

Saeed fits into a carefully constructed role at the beginning of the book. He has a group of friends and his parents, but it hardly feeling successful. He is in some what of a pleasant holding pattern. Waiting for life to catch up with him. And boy does it! He goes through endless adventures. Some he handles well and enjoys, but many he doesn't. It is only when he fully throws off who he thought he was, and allows a new person to emerge that he finds himself and a life. The various steps of his development seemed very believable, and human. The keys to his development are the war and Nadia. Both shook him from his cocoon.

I know no Muslim character like Nadia. Estranged from her family she manages to live alone, has a responsible job, wears her long black dress...and drives a motorcycle. She never becomes religious, but she never changes her conservative clothing, ever when living with a woman in Marin! I found her responses to situations fresh, unexpected but believable. As the book progressed she and Seaad move apart in a very organic manner. They changed, they moved apart. But it is questionable whether they could have survived and flourished without their time together.

I am surprised that some others found the writing style beautiful. I will admit I've always found his style rather clunky. He is so eager to get his ideas out that the words tumble across each other. For example, I can't imagine reading this aloud. I also thought the unrelated scenes stuck into the various parts of the novel to be boils sticking randomly from the skin of the narrative. Bad weird things happen throughout the world? Thanks, I knew that.

I have mixed feelings about the doors. It was an acceptable device to move the characters between scenes, but isn't the major point in this book immigrants and migration? Well, migration doesn't just happen. It is only when you are a 'native' in Mykonos or London or Marin that it seems that 'these people' simply appear one day. Typical response? Make them disappear, make them go back through the door. The most impressive fiction and non-fiction books on migration and emigres that I have read detail the hard, long, dangerous and deadly details of the actual steps required to get from a war zone to relative safety. Early in the book when Saeed and Nadia are stuck in the war zone there are long discussions between them as to how they can escape. The answer is that they can't. They are trapped in a deadly situation and all alternatives seem equally deadly and improbable. But that is the reality for millions of people living in similar situations. Providing a door is a sci-fi plot device unavailable in real life.

Lascosas wrote: "I was looking forward to reading this because I enjoyed both The Reluctant Fundamentalist and, to a lesser degree, How To Get Filth Rich in Rising Asia. I seem to be in the distinct minority in fin..."

I am a little late as usual to the discussion of this one and the first post I read was the one above from Lascosas - and I think it sums up my feelings, particular about the doors and also this made me laugh -

- I also thought the unrelated scenes stuck into the various parts of the novel to be boils sticking randomly from the skin of the narrative. Yes !

I guess debate around this really does come down to these doors and in my case it's not that I don't enjoy this meshing of reality and unreality. I enjoyed how it was employed in The Underground Railroad . I think it could have gone with it here too, if presented in a different way but it's so starkly an artifice with not even a vague nod towards explanation.

I thought his writing in the first 50 or so pages to be outstanding, when he was setting the scene of the relationship and a city descending to war. But for whatever reason things fell apart as soon as everyone was through the doors, or maybe I lost my appreciation for the concept.

Congrats to Mohsin on this win.

http://www.aspenwords.org/programs/li...

Indeed - he's been shortlisted a lot so great that he has won a prize for what is a really excellent book.

This book was my favourite of last year's Booker long list.

Very nice. I loved his prose in this, the only book of his I’ve read.

I didn't really like it - I thought the concept was great but the writing style pretentious. At times it felt like Hamid was writing in his native language and then self-translated it into English

You may find this interesting as the concept of a native language is of course tricky in exactly the world this book describes.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.th...

Gumble's Yard wrote: "You may find this interesting as the concept of a native language is of course tricky in exactly the world this book describes.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.th......"

Thanks!! this was a great read

I really liked the book and would have liked to see it win the prize for reasons I covered in my recent review of Why I am no longer talking to white people about race.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I liked Exit West, my only complaint is that I was looking for the refugee book, the story that made me feel, as much as one can feel something from reading the experiences of others, what it’s like to flee your home and family because of war. This was not that book. It was a lovely book about a relationship that is tested by the challenges of leaving home, but I was not moved by it.

WndyJW wrote: "I liked Exit West, my only complaint is that I was looking for the refugee book, the story that made me feel, as much as one can feel something from reading the experiences of others, what it’s lik..."

Try Anne Michaels Fugitive Pieces, hopefully that will be what you're looking for :)

or maybe T.C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain.

I loved Fugitive Pieces! I read it last year. Thank you though, Robert. I have read some very good WWII, Holocaust stories. I’m still waiting for the book about the current refugee crisis. I’m sure it’s out there, it just hasn’t made it to my radar yet.
The Tortilla Curtain gets very mixed reviews, but I will take your word that it is worth reading.

You might like Refugee Tales.
There is a second volume Refugee Tales: Volume II, but I haven't read that one.

Val wrote: "You might like Refugee Tales.
There is a second volume Refugee Tales: Volume II, but I haven't read that one."

That sounds like the book I want to read! Thank you, Val!

And also how about these two books by one of the UK's leading small presses - who historically have published translations but recently decided to start commissioning novels to deal with topical issues - these two books seem particularly admirable to me in their conception

https://www.peirenepress.com/shop/boo...
https://www.peirenepress.com/shop/boo...