Mashreads Podcast

  Author Mohsin Hamid has an observation about how people migrate today: "Human existence is an existence of transience. We don't stick around, sadly, and we change from moment to moment."   It is this observation that inspired Mohsin's latest novel Exit West, a stirring fable about the world's migrant crisis.   The novel follows two lovers, Nadia and Saeed, who live in a fictional city that succumbs to a militant civil war. Though restrictions are soon placed their city, Nadia and Saeed are not stuck in their immediate location — mysterious doors begin to opening, allowing Nadia and Saeed to migrate from place to place instantly.   The novel is inspired by Mohsin's own migrant past — he has lived all over the world ever since he was a child.    "But I was feeling increasingly this resentment of or fear of migrants that cropping up in America and particularly Britain where I lived before. And when I went back to Pakistan, so many people told me they wanted to lea