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Exit West

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3.79 105,222 ratings 12,987 reviews
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In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their... MoreIn a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors—doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through.

Exit West follows these characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time. Less

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Average rating 3.79  ·  105,222 ratings  ·  12,987 reviews

rated it really liked it
over 3 years ago

“When we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind.”

I thought this book was quietly brutal. And quietly beautiful, as well.

If you've come here looking for magical realism, I would advise against it. Exit West contains only the barest of fantastical elements
...more

rated it did not like it
about 3 years ago

I rarely ever do this, but I'm rating and reviewing this even though I haven't finished it. I just cannot continue. Exit West is one of the most bitterly disappointing and downright awful novels I have read in a long while.

The novel begins with Nadia and Saeed, a couple liv
...more

rated it it was amazing
over 3 years ago

Shelves: owned
I want to shove this book into everyone's hands and say, "READ IT." Undoubtedly the best book I've read so far this year and one of the best I will probably read in 2017. Hamid's writing is lush and evocative and so, so beautiful. The story of immigration is incredibly impor ...more

rated it really liked it
over 3 years ago

Very fascinatingly, I think I would have liked this book more if I had never read the synopsis.

The synopsis makes it sound like we're going to have two lovers who are in a city that is becoming a war zone and then discover magical doors that lead them far away and it's hard
...more

rated it it was amazing
over 3 years ago

Sam, I have you to thank for this one.

"In a city swollen by refugees but still mostly at peace, or at least not yet openly at war, a young man met a young woman in a classroom and did not speak to her."

So begins Mohsin Hamid's extraordinary new novel, Exit West . At once
...more

rated it really liked it
over 3 years ago

Shelves: lor
4+. We need more books like this, or no, maybe that's wrong, what we need are more readers of books like this. The country it takes place is unnamed, but one part makes it sound as if it is in Asia somewhere. A country under siege by opposing parties, a country at war with i ...more

rated it liked it
over 3 years ago

2.5 stars

What started out to be a gorgeously haunting look at life in a Middle East city at the brink of civil war turned ponderous and perplexing by the end of Mohsin Hamid's slim novel Exit West.

In an unnamed city in an unnamed Middle Eastern country (not unlike the sim
...more

rated it it was amazing
over 1 year ago

I really loved this book, and can say without hyperbole that it accomplishes one of - or in my opinion, THE - main goal of fiction: it generates empathy that allows us to better understand our world. The story here is a close allegory of the contemporary migrant experience, ...more

rated it it was ok
over 2 years ago

Exit West had the potential to be the greatest novel published in the last ten years. I don’t say such things liberally; it really did have a certain power due to it being so politically conscious, though somehow it failed to deliver what it could have done.

Let us rewind a l
...more

Other Books by this Author

  • The Reluctant Fundamentalist
    The Reluctant Fundamentalist
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  • How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
    How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
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  • Moth Smoke
    Moth Smoke
    by Mohsin Hamid
  • Discontent and Its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York, and London
    Discontent and Its Civilizations: Dis...
    by Mohsin Hamid
  • A Beheading
    A Beheading
    by Mohsin Hamid
  • The Third-Born
    The Third-Born
    by Mohsin Hamid
  • Nadia and Saeed: Excerpted from EXIT WEST (Electric Literature's Recommended Reading Book 252)
    Nadia and Saeed: Excerpted from EXIT ...
    by Mohsin Hamid
  • Terminator: Attack of the Drone
    Terminator: Attack of the Drone
    by Mohsin Hamid
  • Granta 112: Pakistan
    Granta 112: Pakistan
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Book details

Hardcover, 1st, 231 pages
Published March 7th 2017 by Riverhead
ISBN
0735212171 (ISBN13: 9780735212176)
Edition language
English
Original title
Exit West
Literary Awards
Booker Prize, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, Andrew Carnegie Medal, Kirkus Prize More…Booker Prize, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, Andrew Carnegie Medal, Kirkus Prize, Goodreads Choice Award, Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, International Dublin Literary Award, Aspen Words Literary Prize, Rathbones Folio Prize Less

About this author

2,956 followers
Mohsin Hamid is the author of four novels, Moth Smoke , The Reluctant Fundamentalist , How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia , and Exit West , and a book of essays, Discontent and Its Civilizations .

His writing has been featured on bestseller lists, adapted for the cinema, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, selected as winner or finalist of twenty awards, and translated into thir
...more

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Quotes

We are all migrants through time.
To love is to enter into the inevitability of one day not being able to protect what is most valuable to you.
when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind.

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