Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

This book comes triply recommended.  It was one of the five best works of fiction of 2017 in the minds of the New York Times.  It was also short listed for the Booker Prize, and finally, it was on President Obama's reading list.  So the only question is why did it take me so long to read it, not whether it was good or not.  It is a book about the war torn Middle East, the people who have to escape, and the life that they find in their adopted countries.  I read it while I was in Germany, which was very interesting, because they are a country who have taken in many refugees in recent years, and so i saw first hand some of the people who were most likely in situations at home like those in the book.
At the novel’s opening, the Saeed and Nadia live in “a city swollen by refugees, but still mostly at peace, or at least not yet openly at war,” in a country left deliberately ambiguous—it could be Pakistan, but also Syria, or Libya or any number of others. Saeed works for a company that places outdoor advertisements; Nadia sells insurance. They’re both attached to their smartphones, which we have come to learn can be a life line in cities with poor infrastructure and frequent travel hazards. As is normal for educated, unmarried men in his country, Saeed lives with his parents. Less typical is that Nadia lives alone and rides a motorcycle, and though she isn’t remotely devout, she wears long black robes as a measure of protection.  Their relationship is growing, but then the situation deteriorates dramatically and they are thrown together and are soon on the run, leaving the normal relationship development to be a thing of the past.  It is a good window into an all too common situation in our current world.