Exit West

EXIT WEST by Mohsin Hamid. A unique style of writing, which I think is the signature style of Mohsin Hamid, though I haven’t read any of his other books. This kind of writing, I haven’t seen in any other author. There are quite a few metaphors that are left to be unravelled by the readers. The setting is some internal war-ravaged country; I couldn’t quite put my finger on which country, except that it is an Islamic country. My guess is Afghanistan or some region of Pakistan, like Baluchistan, that is fighting to break away.

It took me some time to visualize what these ‘Doors’ are. (Note that the cover depicts an opening.) It’s just a metaphor – shortened way of saying ‘illegal passage from one country into another with the assistance of traffickers and the connivance of the official machinery.’ It involves payment of money underhand and also accepting the risk to life if caught. [Practically, such channels are clearly operating between several countries including India and Pakistan, India and the Gulf countries.] Hamid doesn’t want to describe each such passage, such as crossing the borders of several countries, which could well be over land and also as stowaways in boats, to arrive in cities as far away as London and California. (Such crossovers from Afghanistan and Pakistan are well captured in Khaled Hosseini’s Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns) Hamid simply puts it as they passed through a door and founde themselves in… That’s because he doesn’t ascribe importance to the risks and hardships involved in the process of the travel. Instead, his novel is about the relationship between Saeed and Nadia, and the difficulty of finding their feet in new countries.

The story is a love-hate relationship between a young unmarried couple in a country that is ravaged by internal wars. The bond between Saeed and Nadia is forged more by the difficult social and political circumstances than by love itself. Indeed, their physical relationship never matures and is minimally physical if ever. The ending is a bit disheartening, but let me not disclose it. Despite the disappointment, the story ends well on a positive note, at least, for the warring country in which the plot originated.

In between the narrative, Hamid lets us witness unconnected incidents in Australia, Tokyo, Amsterdam, and the like. I wondered if these episodes would somehow link up with the Saeed-Nadia story. But no, these incidents are left open and hanging. These I recognized as typical Hamid-metaphor to show us the other end of the ‘Doors’; how the natives and citizens react to illegal immigrants landing up in their countries even when the official entry-points are shut.

Long sentences seem to be the hallmark of Hamid’s writing, and these bothered me quite some trying to keep up with the theme of a particular sentence or a paragraph. The book is replete with seemingly unending sentences, some spilling onto the next page. How’s one to keep track of what the author implied at the beginning of a sentence that has gone beyond a page?

The book is a deserving one to count towards a Booker Prize (it was shortlisted, but missed). It has taken a simple theme that has been chosen by several other authors and presented it in a unique style. I guess because of the oft-repeated nature of the theme that the book missed the big prize.