Exit West (2017)

by
Mohsin Hamid
 About the Author & his
Works
• Mohsin Hamid is a British Pakistani novelist, writer. He was born in
1971 in Lahore, Pakistan, and moved to the US at the age of 18 to
study at Princeton University and Harvard Law School. He then
worked as a management consultant in New York, and later as a
freelance journalist back in Lahore.

• His first novel was Moth Smoke (2000), winner of a Betty Trask Award
and shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Moth Smoke was
made into a television mini-series in Pakistan and an operetta in
Italy, and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 2000.

• In 2007 his second novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), was

published and shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
In 2008, it won the South Bank Show Annual Award for Literature and
was shortlisted for the 2008 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia
Region, Best Book) and the 2008 James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for
fiction). A short story based on the novel was also published in The
Paris Review in 2006.
 About the Author & his
Works
• Hamid's third novel How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising
Asia (2013) won the Tiziano Terzani International
Literary Prize and was shortlisted for the KLF Embassy of
France Prize and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt
International Literature Award.

• His fourth novel, Exit West (2017), was shortlisted for

the Man Booker Prize. And published The Last White
Man in (2022).

• He has also published a book of essays

entitled Discontent and Its Civilisations: Dispatches from
Lahore, New York & London (2014).
 About the Novel “Exit West”
• Genre
• Fabulism; political fiction
• NarratorThe anonymous narrator tells the story as if speaking aloud to another person, occasionally
offering an opinion on events or philosophical commentary.
• Point Of ViewThe unnamed narrator speaks in the third person omnisciently, describing the
innermost thoughts, feelings, and motivations of every character.
• Tone Philosophical, tense, sorrowful, hopeful
• Tense Past tense
• Setting (Time)Unspecified,
• Setting (Place)An unknown city; Mykonos, Greece; London, England; Marin, California
• Protagonist Saeed and Nadia
• Major Conflict The major conflict concerns lovers Saeed and Nadia travelling through a mysterious
magic door to escape their war-torn city and becoming refugees, the stress of which tests their
relationship.
• Rising Action Saeed and Nadia meet and date in an increasingly unstable city. They depart through
a mysterious door. Saeed’s grief over leaving his father causes him to lose patience with Nadia.
Throughout London, their different philosophies and ways of coping with the newness of their
surroundings clash, and the struggle in their relationship.
• Climax Nadia and Saeed leave London for Marin, and it becomes clear to them both that peace and
stability are not enough to save their relationship and they are irreparably moving apart.
• Falling ActionWith space to explore, Nadia and Saeed grow farther apart from each other, and
eventually Nadia decides she needs to leave before they actually start to dislike each other.
• Foreshadowing The narrator often makes explicit references to future events as opposed to
foreshadowing, such as in the early chapters when s/he emphasizes the magnitude of the coming
violence by mentioning who will die soon. The first anecdote about the doors prefigures the danger
Saeed and Nadia will face as refugees. When Saeed’s father makes Nadia promise not to leave Saeed
until he’s safe, it foreshadows their eventual break up.
CHARACTERS
 Saeed
• Saeed is one of the two protagonists of Exit West, a philosophical and educated young man
living in an unnamed country that is undergoing a gradual but dangerous transformation at
the outset of the novel as religious militants increasingly take control in a violent fight against
the government.
• Saeed lives with his parents in an apartment , Saeed’s parents are shown to be educated
individuals and professionals. They are loving and supportive, who appear to understand him
as a person.
• He works during the day at an agency that sells outdoor advertisements, and attends a
business course in the evenings, where he meets Nadia.
• After watching her in class, he asks her to coffee.
• Saeed, who only prays occasionally. What he soon learns, though, is that he’s actually more
religious than Nadia.
• While she wears the robes not from religious feeling but to keep men away.
• They leave their increasingly violent and dangerous country for first Mykonos, then London,
and finally California.
• Saeed is shown as a sensitive, nostalgic soul, from the moment he leaves his country and his
father, Saeed focuses less on the journey ahead and more on what he has left behind.
• In London, Saeed doesn’t try to connect with the Nigerians in the house and even considers
trading a private room for a bed on the floor if it involves being near people from his country.
• After he migrates, he begins to pray multiple times per day as a way of connecting to the past
life and the family.
• Finally, in Marin, Saeed discovers that he can find ways to both connect with his home culture
and embrace the new. And he grew to praying more often than he did in the past.
• Over the course of the novel, Saeed grows apart from Nadia. Nadia perceives Saeed to be too
obsessed with his native culture, and so they eventually go their separate ways.
 Nadia
• Nadia is one of the two protagonists of Exit West, a free-spirited and rebellious
woman who embraces migration as a journey to a new life.
• Unlike Saeed, Nadia grows up with a family that doesn’t understand her and
criticizes her inquisitive nature.
• After moving away from home,. Nadia develops a tough and cold exterior in
order to keep herself safe, symbolized by her black robe.
• For Nadia, it is not belief or belonging that are important, but rather her
independence and autonomy.
• Therefore, she doesn’t lose as much as Saeed when she leaves her home
country for Mykonos.
• Because Nadia never had a sense of belonging in her country, she
approaches every place on her journey as somewhere with an opportunity to
find people to connect with.
• As she and Saeed travel as refugees from country to country, Nadia becomes
increasingly excited about the changes they experience, ultimately embracing
the multi-cultural nature of migrant communities, while Saeed retreats into
himself and searches for ways to reconnect with his home culture
• Nadia grows apart from Saeed because outside the context of their country,
his slightly conservative nature reminds her too much of what she
enthusiastically left behind.
 Saeed’s Father

• The character of Saeed’s father symbolizes the

sacrifices inherent in migration.
• Saeed’s father is shown as a loving, caring man, he
decides to stay behind in their home country in order
to give Saeed the best chance of facing the ordeals of
a migrant’s life.
• It is significant that Saeed’s father prays not for peace
when violence broke out at start, but for Saeed
individually, firmly prioritizing his son.
• After his wife’s death, Saeed’s father spends his time
with relatives who remember her in order to feel close
to her memory, living in the past.
• Saeed’s father cannot migrate because he has no
desire to imagine a future for himself, but only for his
son.
 Saeed's Mother

• Saeed’s mother appears for a short while in the novel, but

her character plays a significant role in Saeed’s personal
development as well as the overall development of the plot.
• A former teacher with a bright and ambitious spirit, Saeed’s
mother cares deeply about her family and attempts to
maintain an optimistic attitude for them despite the growing
conflict in their city.
• As Saeed grows up, his parents model the importance of
togetherness, and he develops a close connection to his
family and their traditions as a result.
• Saeed’s mother feels anxiety regarding her family’s safety,
and she begins praying more regularly and takes a sedative
before bed as the violence in the city increases
• Saeed’s mother dies after being hit by a stray bullet leaving
his family sorrowful and grieved.
Themes
 Themes

• Migration
• Nationalism
• Religion
• Mortality
• Love of Culture and Homeland
• Fear
• Escape
 Motifs
• Motifs
• Motifs are recurring structures,
contrasts, and literary devices that
can help to develop and inform the
text’s major themes.
• Power Outages
• Surveillance
• Religion
• Prayer (Chap # 10 pg 118 -)
Symbols
 Symbols
• Symbols
• Symbols are objects, characters,
figures, and colors used to represent
abstract ideas or concepts.
• The Doors
• Cell Phones
• Nadia’s Robe
 Important Quotes
chapter # 2
• It was the sort of view that might command a slight premium
during gentler, more prosperous times, but would be most
undesirable in times of conflict, when it would be squarely in
the path of heavy machine-gun and rocket fire as fighters
advanced into this part of town. . . . Location, location, location,
the realtors say. Geography is destiny, respond the historians.
• Chapter # 5
• . . . but that is the way of things, for when we migrate, we
murder from our lives those we leave behind.
• Chapter # 8
• ‘Why would we want to move?' she said.
'To be among our own kind,' Saeed answered.
'What makes them our kind?'
'They’re from our country.'
'From the country we used to be from.'
'Yes.' Saeed tried not to sound annoyed.
'We’ve left that place.'
'That doesn’t mean we have no connection.'
'They’re not like me.'
 Contd.
• Chapter # 9
• Every time a couple moves they begin, if their attention is
still drawn to one another, to see each other differently, for
personalities are not a single immutable color, like white or
blue, but rather illuminated screens, and the shades we
reflect depend much on what is around us.
Chapter # 10
We are all migrants through time.
… When he prayed he touched his parents, who could not
otherwise be touched, and he touched a feeling that we are
all children who lose our parents, all of us every man and
woman, and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by
those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites
humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature
of our being-ness and our shared sorrow, the heartache we
each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one
another, and out of this Saeed felt it might be possible, in
the face of death, to believe in humanity’s potential for
building a better world, and so he prayed as a lament, as a
consolation , and as a hope …