CBR18BINGO: And (2nd book by this author)
Nadia and Saeed live in a nameless, though apparently majority Muslim, country. As their city becomes a battleground between militants and the army, they discover a way out through magical doors that have been appearing throughout the planet, and through which refugees pour into various other countries. This leads to an opportunity for the book to explore themes of migration, assimilation, and anti-migration sentiment. I appreciated that Nadia and Saeed’s city and country are never named, allowing the book to feel more universally applicable.
It was interesting to read this so soon after reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I wasn’t sure what to expect, how much of the first book had been Hamid’s style vs the narrator’s. It is a very different style, taking a more distant view of the main characters and occasionally diverting away from them entirely. For a while, this meant that some of my interest in the novel was maintained by the unfolding mystery of the doors—what were they and how did they work? Not a lot of time is given to answering these questions; they’re simply something that exists. By the time the doors felt more commonplace, I was invested in the outcome of what would happen to Nadia and Saeed and to how communities were reacting to the influx of migrants.
The prose stood out more in this book, or at least in a more positive way. With The Reluctant Fundamentalist, I was struck by the sometimes awkward 2nd person POV. In Exit West, Hamid uses long sentences full of commas, and some of the lines pack a punch, such as “. . . for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind” (pg. 98).
I enjoyed the book and its hopeful ending, and I think I’ll be checking out more from Mohsin Hamid.
