James (JD) Dittes answers “Does the page and a half at the beginning...”

Princessdarcy asked this question about Exit West:

Does the page and a half at the beginning that the author spends talking about the parent's sex life in vivid detail have anything to do with the actual story? The father's impotence and the mother's insatiable sexual appetite seems to be well out of place...

James (JD) Dittes I think it foreshadows Saeed and Nadia's own sexual relationship, which of course represents a distance will be impacted by losing their homes and liv…moreI think it foreshadows Saeed and Nadia's own sexual relationship, which of course represents a distance will be impacted by losing their homes and living abroad as refugees.

I also think that Hamid is using the scene (and Nadia's preference of being covered in a black robe despite her preference for both sex and drugs) to challenge western readers' assumptions about Muslims in general and refugees in particular--they are indeed very normal people who laugh, who have sex, who enjoy drugs the same as we do--who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. One finds a similar dynamic in Nihad Sirees's The Silence and the Roar, which is also about Syria but not at all about refugees.(less)

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Juanita I don't sense the need to challenge as the basis for Nadia's robe. It is more, as you say, to show how she is like all of us, with complex identities ...more
Oct 23, 2017 07:50AM

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