New York, NY: Riverhead Books (2018)

As new in paperback.

One of the most anticipated and thunderously greeted books of 2017: an astonishingly timely love story that brilliantly imagines the forces that transform ordinary people into refugees and the impossible choices that follow, to the uncertain embrace of new lands.

In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors—doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through…

Exit West follows these remarkable characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time.

Mohsin Hamid is the internationally bestselling author of four previous books, which have been translated into more than 30 languages and won or been shortlisted for numerous prizes, including the Booker. His essays and fiction have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Granta, and many other publications. After many years in New York and London, he lives in his hometown of Lahore, Pakistan.