Exit West

by Mohsin Hamid

“Let’s agree to try harder not to speak shittily to each other,” she said. He smiled. “Let’s promise.”

Also they spoke different variations of English, different Englishes, and so when Nadia gave voice to an idea or opinion among them, she did not need to fear that her views could not be comprehended, for her English was like theirs, one among many.

the young people with their guns and their knives and their fists and their teeth were entitled to use these things,

life and its end are unpredictable, especially at a distance, where death seems to operate with such whimsical aim.

surfeit

Excess

sibilant,

Hissing sound

crenellated

Adorned with battlements (jack-o-lantern teeth ridges)

they did not yet know that shame, for the displaced, was a common feeling, and that there was, therefore, no particular shame in being ashamed.

So it was with Saeed and Nadia, who found themselves changed in each other’s eyes in this new place.

the farther they moved from the city of their birth, through space and through time, the more he sought to strengthen his connection to it, tying ropes to the air of an era that for her was unambiguously gone.

plebiscite

Vote