--- title: Mohsin Hamid's "Exit West": Review description: His new novel imagines migrant escape via magic portals canonical: https://time.com/4606077/mohsin-hamid-exit-west-refugees/ author: Sarah Begley article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-12-19T11:41:26.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T02:22:07.011Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Mohsin Hamid's "Exit West": Review og:description: His new novel imagines migrant escape via magic portals og:url: https://time.com/4606077/mohsin-hamid-exit-west-refugees/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb1544bfb93955cc0/6988b37086f68e5cd96e2fd0/mohsin-hamid-exit-west-novel-refugees.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: "Exit West" by Mohsin Hamid og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Mohsin Hamid's "Exit West": Review twitter:description: His new novel imagines migrant escape via magic portals twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb1544bfb93955cc0/6988b37086f68e5cd96e2fd0/mohsin-hamid-exit-west-novel-refugees.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Refugees Through the Looking Glass in "Exit West" by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Dec 19, 2016 11:41 AM UTC  by [Sarah Begley](https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/) ## Sarah Begley Dec 19, 2016 11:41 AM UTC In the new year, citizens around the world will argue over the fate of [refugees](http://time.com/4605230/holidays-refugees-faith/) fleeing [by sea](http://time.com/refugee-rescue/), by land and by air. But in Pakistani author [Mohsin Hamid](http://time.com/4527253/2016-election-refugees/)‘s new novel, they escape by enchanted door. [_Exit West_](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0735212171/?tag=timecom-20) (out March 7) takes place in an unnamed city where Islam prevails but sex, ‘shrooms and smartphones are also prolific. A young couple, Saeed and Nadia, are falling in love even as their city is spiraling into war, with explosions plaguing every neighborhood and “helicopters \[filling\] the sky like birds startled by a gunshot.” The conflict accelerates the relationship, and soon Saeed and Nadia decide to seek out one of the doors they’ve been hearing about, portals to another, safer part of the planet. Using doorways to exit conflict zones, people (mostly dark-skinned) emerge in Western societies to the surprise of other people (mostly light-skinned) and spark controversy. In refugee camps and squatter dens, the couple must protect themselves from the furious “natives” who are organizing mobs to brutalize these vulnerable new arrivals. Hamid’s prose powerfully evokes the violence and anxiety of lives lived “under the drone-crossed sky.” But his whimsical framing of the situation offers a hopeful metaphor for the future as the “natives” come to accept their new neighbors. “Perhaps they had grasped that the doors could not be closed,” he writes, “and new doors would continue to open, and they had understood that the denial of coexistence would have required one party to cease to exist, and the extinguishing party too would have been transformed in the process.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4606077/mohsin-hamid-exit-west-refugees/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4606077/mohsin-hamid-exit-west-refugees/"},"headline":"Refugees Through the Looking Glass in \"Exit West\"","datePublished":"2016-12-19T11:41:26.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T02:22:07.011Z","description":"Mohsin Hamid's new novel imagines migrant escape via magic portals","url":"https://time.com/4606077/mohsin-hamid-exit-west-refugees/","keywords":["Books"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb1544bfb93955cc0/6988b37086f68e5cd96e2fd0/mohsin-hamid-exit-west-novel-refugees.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Sarah Begley","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/sarah-begley/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb1544bfb93955cc0/6988b37086f68e5cd96e2fd0/mohsin-hamid-exit-west-novel-refugees.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"\"Exit West\" by Mohsin Hamid","caption":"\"Exit West\" by Mohsin Hamid","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/books/","name":"Books"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4606077/mohsin-hamid-exit-west-refugees/","name":"Refugees Through the Looking Glass in \"Exit West\""}}]}] ```