St. James Book Club: Exit West, 6/7/17

We had fun with the last selection–My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith. (Some of you may know him from his wonderful series, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.)

Our next selection is Exit West,: A Novel by Mohsin Hamid. Amazon describes it thusly:
An Amazon Best Book of March 2017: When Nadia and Saeed fall in love in a distant unnamed city, they are just like any other young couple. But soon bullets begin to fly, fighter jets streak the sky, and curfews fall. As the spell of violence spreads, they flee their country, leaving behind their loved ones. Early in Exit West, the author Mohsin Hamid explains that geography is destiny, and in the case of his two young lovers, geography dictates that they must leave. Hamid offers up a fantastical device to deliver his refugees to places: they pass through magic doors. Rather than unmooring the story from reality, this device, as well as a few other fantastical touches, makes the book more poignant and focused, pointing our attention to the emotions of exile rather than the mechanics. Surrounded by other refugees, Nadia and Saeed try to establish their places in the world, putting up different responses to their circumstances. The result is a novel that is personal, not pedantic, an intimate human story about an experience shared by countless people of the world, one that most Americans just witness on television. —Chris Schluep , The Amazon Book Review

As always, you can borrow these book club reads (typically available in several formats) from your local library (or follow this local library link), or purchase them from your local independent book store or on-line from sites such as Amazon, where they are no doubt available in different formats and editions.

Join us at 1170 Broadway at 7pm on June 7th. Enter through the side door on Clarendon. See you soon!