Exit West - by Mohsin Hamid

I read very little fiction, but I picked up Exit West at Sugarfoot Books in San Anselmo because the bookseller told me I’d like it. She knew almost nothing about me, but she wasn’t wrong.

Hamid tells a beautifully surreal-yet-true-feeling story of two young people stepping through mysterious doors that open into new cities — each crossing reshaping who they are. He borrows the language of fantasy — portals, crossings, sudden new worlds — but strips away the escapism. These doors aren’t magic; they’re metaphors for the real, urgent migrations people make when crisis forces their hand.

What Exit West captures so well is the internal landscape of displacement — the grief and disorientation, the literal and emotional alienation of arriving somewhere you don’t quite belong, and the fragile hope of trying to build a life anyway. For people who think about cities as containers for human possibility, it hits deeply.

I recommend this to anyone open to fiction that reads like social commentary — and to anyone working with communities navigating movement, uncertainty, or reinvention.