Exit West

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Exit West is a novel by the Pakistani-British writer Mohsin Hamid . It was published in 2017 by the British publisher Hamish Hamilton ( Penguin Books ). The German translation by Monika Köpfer was published by DuMont Buchverlag that same year . Hamid's novel accompanies a young couple in love from Arabia on their flight from an unspecified Muslim country in which a civil war has broken out.

The author added fairytale-like elements to the realistic story, with the protagonists and other characters changing their locations through magical doors or other suddenly appearing portals. Hamid took the motif of the doors that lead to other worlds from the fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia by Clive Staples Lewis , his childhood favorite.

content

A nameless city, in the present: An incipient civil war is causing numerous people to flee to Nadia's and Saeed's hometown. The two get to know each other while attending an evening course on corporate identity and product branding . Saeed, the son of a university professor and a teacher, raised more conservatively, is moderately religious and has been devoted to astronomy since childhood . He works in an advertising agency and still lives with his parents. The self-confident and freedom-loving Nadia doesn't care about religion and has broken with her family. She lives in her own apartment, works for an insurance company and drives an off-road motorcycle. To protect herself from aggressive men, she covers her body in a conservative black robe. Although Nadia lets shy Saeed off at the beginning, the two get closer and fall in love. They smoke joints and eat psychedelic mushrooms together in Nadia's apartment . Only sex before marriage, Saeed initially refuses to the disappointment of the more experienced Nadia.

Soon the fighting between Muslim extremists and government troops reached Nadia and Saeed's hometown as well. The extremists attack the stock market, whereupon the government imposed curfews. Nadia and Saeed's employers fire them or flee. As an anti-terrorist measure, the telephone network is switched off, which makes communication between Nadia and Saeed more difficult, who barricade themselves in their respective apartments. The war becomes everyday life and militant fighters gradually conquer the city. When Saeed's mother is accidentally killed by a stray bullet, Nadia moves into his and his father's apartment. Meanwhile, rumors are spreading that refugees can escape war through magical doors and get anywhere. The extremists are making the use of the portals a death penalty, while international media also report on them and heads of state see them as the cause of a major global refugee crisis. Nadia and Saeed decide to escape through one of the doors. While Saeed's father stays behind and Nadia makes a promise to take care of his son, they both pay an agent. He leads them to a door in an abandoned dental office through which they arrive on the Greek island of Mykonos .

Nadia and Saeed live on the outskirts of a refugee camp in Mykonos, before they manage to escape through another door into an empty, luxurious apartment complex in London . The house is soon taken over by Nigerian refugees, so that Nadia and Saeed are the only Arab couple to share an apartment there. More and more migrants are settling in London. There are more and more violent clashes with opponents of immigration, in which the military must also intervene. Nadia and Saeed are beaten up and cannot work as illegal immigrants. At the same time, there is increasing tension between the two. Nadia takes part in the advice given by the residents and, to Saeed's annoyance, refuses to take off her dark robes. Saeed finds solace in prayer and for a short time support in a house community of compatriots, in which a preacher also speaks of being a martyr. His suggestion to move into this community is rejected by Nadia.

As the unrest gradually subsided after the unsuccessful evacuation of the migrant ghettos, satellite towns were built in the formerly protected green belt of London to accommodate the refugees in small apartments. Although Nadia and Saeed are exhausting themselves on the construction project and have the chance of a joint apartment, both travel through one of the doors to the newly built city of Marin , California . Nadia and Saeed live there in a self-built hut, but become aware of their estrangement and separate by mutual agreement. Saeed, who often devotes himself to prayer in Marin, falls in love with the daughter of a preacher whose late mother came from his home country. Nadia, who has found work in a food cooperative, falls for a masculine-looking cook.

50 years later, Nadia visits her hometown for the first time after leaving, where the civil war has long since ended. She meets Saeed again, who has returned, and both report from their lives. They decide to meet again one day in the Atacama desert of Chile to look at the starry sky together.

Awards

2017 came Exit West on the shortlist of the British Man Booker Prize . In the same year Hamid's work reached the final of the Kirkus Prize of the American magazine Kirkus Review . Exit West received the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the “Fiction” category. In 2019 the novel was on the shortlist for the International DUBLIN Literary Award .

Planned film version

In August 2017 it was announced that the US directors Joe and Anthony Russo had secured the rights to a film adaptation of Exit West . While the brothers want to produce the film, the Norwegian Morten Tyldum was chosen to direct .

expenditure

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Carsten Hueck: Doors that lead to other worlds . In: deutschlandfunkkultur.de , September 26, 2017 (accessed October 17, 2017).
  2. ↑ 2017 finalists . In: Kirkusreviews.com (accessed October 17, 2017).
  3. ↑ Mike Fleming Jr.: Russo Brothers In First Look With Morten Tyldum, Acquire 'Exit West' For Him To Direct . In: deadline.com , August 10, 2017 (accessed October 17, 2017).