Recommended by the Reviewers Club
Mohsin Hamid’s forth novel Exit West is well written and reflects our troubled times.
The book follows two young lovers, Nadia and Saeed, from an unnamed country that is being torn apart by civil war. Their love affair is described as they meet and then escape and migrate to the West. In the West, the setting becomes dystopian where the natives rise up against the migrants as they take over central London in parks and squatting en masse in million-pound mansions.
It is a non-judgemental narrative, as it would be easy to judge the brutally idealistic militants, the fear mongering natives in the UK, East versus West, and so on. But Hamid tells the story with an even-handed tone, focusing on the individual and the personal to great effect. A novel that makes you think and has heart, however I was disappointed at some of the strange and seemingly irrelevant characters included towards the end and finally. The ending was also disappointing.
3.4/5 Stars