As I begin my 2026 writing journey, I am determined to complete my reviews for the books on The Backlist by the end of February. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid is the next book on that list, so I dug up my old Facebook post from 2017, which you can read below.
For this new post, I read the book on audiobook, narrated by the author. As a rule, I strongly dislike authors narrating their own fiction books. But Exit West was an excellent exception to that rule.
Kevin Thompson, Sarah Jaffe, and Jamal Rahman at Penguin Audio did an excellent job directing, producing, and recording Hamid’s performance. On this re-read, the beauty of Hamid’s prose and the power of a well-told tale shine through.
Re-reading my Facebook review after this listen, I feel I may have been unfair in saying Hamid doesn’t give the characters depth. He does, but in a way that can feel externalized. When Nadia chooses to leave Saeed, she simply packs a bag and walks out. Just as they once walked out of their home country.
I realize now that 2017 me missed the deliberate distance Hamid put between the characters of Nadia and Saeed and the forces that impact their lives. I think that distance made me feel as though the characters don’t have the depth.
As I listened this time, I realized that the characters do have deep inner lives, but that we do not experience those lives through internalized thoughts and feelings.
That’s because Hamid uses dialogue sparingly, instead relying on the narrator’s description of conversations. In Chapter 11, Nadia leaves Saeed, but that decision is narrated. The single line of dialogue in that chapter comes from a pale-skinned tattooed man who threatens Nadia with a gun:
So what the fuck do you think of that?
Nadia gives no reply.
But the most important choice Nadia makes in her life is described in third person through narration rather than spoken in first person through dialogue.
Such mediation of their thoughts and feelings through an omnipotent third-party gives me the sense that the characters have little agency in their own stories. Their individual choices feel driven by structural forces like globalization and war.
As the U.S. reels from state-sanctioned violence carried out on its own citizens, people are asking: how do we carry on with our every day work, school, and leisure activities while the world crumbles? Exit West answers that question.
The distance Hamid places between the characters’ lived reality, the structural forces that influence their choices, and the storytelling narrative belies an objective reality that simply does not exist for the characters. They continue their regular activities and fall in—and out of—love regardless of the structural forces at play. The story of Nadia and Saeed is not a story of revolutionaries who fight for their country’s independence. Rather, for Nadia and Saeed, love itself is a revolutionary act.
From my Facebook review on 7 June 2017:
I have become a Mohsin Hamid fangirl. Hamid is a Pakistani born British national. But he was educated at the American school in Lahore and attended Princeton (where he worked with Joyce Carol Oates and Toni Morrison) and Harvard Law. His style reflects this multinational, multicultural background.
Part post-colonial magical realism, part brash American with a touch of British lyricism, the joy of this book is its lightness. People often think that heavy topics must have heavy words, but the best writers know this is a lie.
For lightness that gives Hamid’s words weight. Immigration, globalization, and the refugee crisis are not light topics, yet Hamid manages to write an immensely feather-light book. He does not get bogged down in the pain or horror of war, and yet manages to communicate it searingly.
I did, however, wish for more depth. That’s the weakness of this book. The characters are merely that and nothing more. They escape from their war-torn home country, but they do not escape the book’s pages. I felt like Hamid’s interests did not lie with the refugees themselves but with the way in which they could tell the story of the larger forces at work.
Technology and globalization are major themes. In Hamid’s Exit West world, our global connectedness propels us into a future in which changing countries is as easy as opening a door, and yet loneliness remains the defining human emotion that disconnects us from ourselves and others.
My pitch for Exit West
For fans of the Saint of Bright Doors and The Kite Runner, Exit West is an exquisitely told story that propels us into a future in which changing countries is as easy as opening a door.
Nadia and Saeed live ordinary lives in a country at war with itself. They fall in love and make plans for the future. After an unspeakable tragedy, the lovers walk through a mysterious door that transports them to another country. We follow their migrations across continents and time.
You should read this book if:
- You are struggling to understand how we “keep calm and carry on” in the face of injustice and heartbreak.
- You love lyrical almost poetic language.
- You love magical doors that lead characters on new adventures.
Book details
Title: Exit West
Author: Mohsin Hamid
Narrator: Mohsin Hamid
Genre: Contemporary fiction, literary fiction, awesome fucking writing
Publisher: Riverhead Books/ Penguin Audio
Publication date: March 2017
Pages: 240
Audiobook length: 4 hours 42 minutes
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