Exit West

A Novel

By: Mohsin Hamid

Narrated by: Mohsin Hamid

Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

Finalist for the Booker prize

The New York Times best-selling novel: an astonishingly visionary love story that imagines the forces that drive ordinary people from their homes into the uncertain embrace of new lands, from the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist and the forthcoming The Last White Man.

In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet - sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors - doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through...

Exit West follows these remarkable characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time.

©2017 Mohsin Hamid (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

10 Best Books of 2017, New York Times Book Review

Winner of The L.A. Times Book Prize for Fiction

Winner of The Aspen Words Literary Prize

“Moving, audacious, and indelibly human.” (Entertainment Weekly, “A” rating)

“It was as if Hamid knew what was going to happen to America and the world, and gave us a road map to our future...At once terrifying and...oddly hopeful.” (Ayelet Waldman, The New York Times Book Review)

very good

pace was a little slow but overall great book. really like that the story focuses on the young refugees relationship, not the political issues forcing them to leave their country.

Did not live up to the hype

I had heard a lot of great things about this book but it really didn't live up to it. The characters and storyline are largely forgettable, and the fantasy element (which is what made the book sound unusual and special) was similarly a let down.

Unusual and engaging, but also frustrating

I had a love/hate response to the narrator. His slow robotic style of reading was at times annoying, but it also created an atmosphere of timelessness.
I’m glad I read the story because it was thought provoking but I didn’t ‘enjoy’ it. It’s a bit like eating veggies coz they’re good for you, and not because you like them.

great book

very much enjoyed this story. enjoyed the writing style and the topic is very timely.

Try another narrator!

This is a wonderful story, but the author does it no service with the narration, which makes it difficult to stick with to the end. Alas...

Sketching out the human story

It turns out, that we are all of one cloth.

Hamid shows us that we can be, at once, so diverse and so much the same in our human character.

Elegant and Powerful

I was skeptical when I heard about the conceit involving doors, and the plot sounded depressing, but this one surprised me. It reminded me there can be elegance and power in a simple idea told well.

Beautiful, touching, sad.

A touching but sorrowful love story. Powerful commentary on what it is to be an immigrant. Somehow seems to portend the future of society. Beautifully written and narrated. Moving. Lingers as the best novels do.

Enjoyable Book

My first audiobook. Thoroughly enjoyed most of the story and felt emotionally connected to the characters but was disappointed by the ending. Feel as if I can now empathize more with refugees.

Slow burn character and story develpment

I ended up enjoying Exit West much more than I had anticipated when I first started. Hamid uses a methodical narrative style to capture vignettes of the lives of his characters, even extending to nameless characters we meet only once, snapshots of people's lives who on the surface have no relation to the protagonists but whose shared experiences enliven the story.

Hamid presents a fictional future that likely already exists in some countries and will be more widespread over the coming decades. A world in which human societies are more divided but also more interconnected, where large groups of migrants have to eke out their existence in new places, fundamentally reshaping the identity of the places they come to inhabit, as well as themselves.

Hamid's narration is steady, and emotional notes come not in his inflection, but in the meaning and rhythm of his words.