Exit West is Mohsin Hamid's 2017 follows a young couple, Saeed and Nadia, who live in a city in the midst of a civil war. Fearing for their safety, they are finally forced to flee the city through a series of doors that lead to other parts of the world, where they discover immense poverty and great wealth throughout the country. In the novel, we see the effect migrants have on native-born populations and the effects of migration in general. Nevertheless, after a while, Saeed and Nadia fall out of love. Fifty years later, the two meet up and Saeed offers to take Nadia to see the stars in Chile. It explores themes of emigration and refugee problems.
Upon release, Exit West was met with very solid reviews. On Amazon, it has a very respectable rating of 4 out of 5 stars. On book review aggregator site Goodreads.com, it holds a solid albeit unspectacular rating of 3.81 out of 5 stars. Omar El Akkad of The Globe and Mail called it ""a masterpiece of humanity and restraint." It was selected for the 2017 Man Booker prize shortlist. In 2017, former President Barack Obama called the novel one of the best he had read that year. The New York Times also named it one of the ten best books of 2017.
In 2017, it was announced that the Russo brothers, directors of a number of famous Marvel movies and a few famous episodes of the TV show Community, purchased the rights to the novel with the intent of producing it and having Morten Tyldum direct it. No release date has so far been announced.
