Immense Risks: the Migrant Crisis, Magical Realism, and Realist “Magic” in Mohsin Hamid’s Novel Exit West
Immense Risks: the Migrant Crisis, Magical Realism, and Realist “Magic” in Mohsin Hamid’s Novel Exit West

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyse Mohsin Hamid’s 2017 Exit West as a literary response to the 2015 migrant crisis. Hamid’s fourth novel will be shown as, on the one hand, a formal departure from his previous works, but on the other, a continuation of the most important thematic threads in the author’s output. The paper demonstrates how Hamid takes on the risky challenge of capturing the migrant experience by offering a nuanced response to the refugee crisis, which opens up the novel to interpretations from the perspectives of postcolonial studies, trauma theory, and socioliterature. Furthermore, Hamid’s use of the technique of magical realism will be examined as a metaphor and an ellipsis; however, it will be argued that the novel’s politically subversive potential lies elsewhere: in the formally realist vision of an optimistic resolution to the migrant crisis. This ending, for many readers unrealistic and fantastical, if not “magical,” offers a “radical political engagement with the future,” as it provides the author’s unflagging expression of support for what he calls “impurity,” as well as his appeal for strategic hope and optimism in the face of the currently dominant political discourse of fear and division.

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