A BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club Pick - Booker Gems
THE NEW YORK TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017
WINNER OF THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE
'Astonishing' Zadie Smith
'Stunning' Spectator
'Extraordinary' TLS
An extraordinary story of love and hope from the bestselling author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist
All over the world, doors are appearing.
They lead to other cities, other countries, other lives.
And in a city gripped by war, Nadia and Saeed are newly in love.
Hardly more than strangers, desperate to survive, they open a door and step through.
But the doors only go one way.
Once you leave, there is no going back.
*Coming soon as a major Netflix film - produced by Michelle and Barack Obama and starring Riz Ahmed*
'One of the year's most significant literary works' The New York Times
'A masterpiece' Michael Chabon
'Addictively readable and brilliantly written. Fantastic' Mail on Sunday
Imprint: Penguin
Published: 02/03/2017
ISBN: 9780241979075
Length: 240 Pages
RRP: £8.99
Writing in spare, crystalline prose, Hamid conveys the experience of living in a city under siege with sharp, stabbing immediacy
Immediately canonical
As with the very best literature, its crystalline readability fast eclipses its topicality
[A] devastating portrait of victims of war, creating a singular parable about modernity, migration and the individual's place in the world
A deceptively simple conceit turns a timely novel about a couple fleeing a civil war into a profound meditation on the psychology of exile. A novel that fuses the real with the surreal - perhaps the most faithful way to convey the tremulous political fault lines of our interconnected planet
No conventional love story. [An] exceptionally moving and powerful novel
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.
Impressive... Exit West confirms Hamid's reputation as a brilliant ventriloquist who is deeply engaged with the most pressing issues of our time
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
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