On Anti-Escapism

“The apocalypse appeared to have arrived and it was not yet apocalyptic,” Mohsin Hamid writes in his 2017 novel Exit West, “which is to say while the changes were jarring they were not the end, and life went on.” The novel concerns a young couple, Saeed and Nadia, living in an unnamed Middle Eastern country that is being torn apart by civil war. When rumours of magic doors that can take you into other countries begin to circulate, the couple set out on their journey across the world and towards a different life. It is a novel about migration, about the ongoing refugee crisis that the world keeps turning a blind eye to, and about the tribalism and supposed safety of similarity. 

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