Publication Date: 02/03/2017 ISBN: 9780241290088 Category:

Exit West

Mohsin Hamid

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Publication Date: 02/03/2017 ISBN: 9780241290088 Category:
Hardback

£14.99

Out of stock

Description

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017

SHORTLISTED FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR FICTION

NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION

Winner of the Aspen Words Literary Prize

*One of Barack Obama’s top ten books of 2017*
The Times Top 10 Bestseller
Guardian Top 10 Bestseller
The New York Times Top 5 Bestseller

Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal 2018 and finalist for the Neustadt Prize 2018

‘Spare, crystalline prose, mixing the real and the surreal and using old fairy-tale magic… An unnervingly dystopian portrait of what might lie down the road’ Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

An extraordinary story of love and hope from the bestselling, Man Booker-shortlisted author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Nadia and Saeed are two ordinary young people, attempting to do an extraordinary thing – to fall in love – in a world turned upside down. Theirs will be a love story but also a story about how we live now and how we might live tomorrow, of a world in crisis and two human beings travelling through it.

Civil war has come to the city which Nadia and Saeed call home. Before long they will need to leave their motherland behind – when the streets are no longer useable and the unknown is safer than the known. They will join the great outpouring of people fleeing a collapsing city, hoping against hope, looking for their place in the world . . .

Publisher Review

Writing in spare, crystalline prose, Hamid conveys the experience of living in a city under siege with sharp, stabbing immediacy * Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times * Immediately canonical * New Yorker * As with the very best literature, its crystalline readability fast eclipses its topicality * Mail on Sunday * Publisher's description. In an unnamed city swollen by refugees but not yet at war, two young people meet and fall in love. They pretend not to hear the sound of bombs getting closer every night. But one day soon they will have to escape this place, running for their lives, searching for their place in the world. * Penguin * Impressive... Exit West confirms Hamid's reputation as a brilliant ventriloquist who is deeply engaged with the most pressing issues of our time -- Andrew Motion (Book of the Week) * Guardian * Powerful... Hamid unfolds the disintegration of civic life and the couple's poignant intimacy with vivid, economical strokes. Hamid is the master of the illuminating metaphor * Sunday Times * Wry [and] intelligent... Part pared-down romance, part 21st-century fable for a world of porous borders, Exit West is a thought experiment that pivots on the crucial figure of this century: the migrant * Financial Times * A subtle and moving examination of how human relationships endure and falter under unimaginable pressures. Exit West is an instant classic * GQ * Breathlessly relevant... Hamid's book could hardly be more timely; it's addictively readable and brilliantly written to boot * Mail on Sunday * Astonishing * Zadie Smith * Exit West packs such an emotional wallop you will be thinking about it for days afterwards. For Hamid is not only telling a story, he is asking what sort of a world we want to live in. * Editor's Choice, the Bookseller * A love story as spare, haunting and spiritually powerful as a haiku. All my life I will remember Nadia and Saeed, their humanity against a surreal, broken landscape. Exit West is Hamid's finest book. * Kiran Desai * It's a terrific, beautifully constructed, important novel of our time. This is what we expect fiction to do: to examine our age but also to cast an eye on the past and - very brilliantly in this case - on the future too. I love it. * Mirza Waheed * Exit West is a masterpiece. It stretches the boundaries of the real just enough to make a point about the state of immigrants and refugees in the contemporary world. But it's very much grounded in reality. It's a beautiful book. * Michael Chabon * Mohsin Hamid is one of the most talented and formally audacious writers of his generation * Telegraph * A man born to write -- Dave Eggers The voice of a changing continent. A writer at the top of his game * Metro *

Book experts at your service

What are you looking for?

A recommendation
Something specific
  • Mr B's Recommendation Station
  • Fill in the three questions below, along with your name and email address, and our book experts will be in touch soon with their personal recommendations

  • I'm after something specific
  • Tell us about the book, author or subject you're looking for, along with your name and email address and our book experts will be in touch as soon as possible