Exit West by Mohsin Hamid: A review
Nadia and Saeed are a young couple living in an unnamed city in an unnamed country in an unnamed part of the world. They are also living in an unspecified time, although it is a time when social media and the internet are integral parts of their lives and when drones hover in the air spying on the happenings below. The place where they live is about to be riven by conflict between militants and the government, a most uncivil war. The reader is left with the impression that their home is somewhere in the Middle East, although truthfully, for all we know, it could just as easily be Detroit or Memphis or Des Moines. We do know that the two have brown skin and that Saeed is a committed Muslim who prays regularly and that Nadia is independent and non-religious, although she wears the black robe of a Muslim woman as a kind of disguise. I think all of this non-specificity is meant to make the characters into kind of Everypersons, someone with whom every reader can identify. There is also a su...