Reviews

• 難民が世界中に移住できる「どこでもドア」があったとしたら？ ブッカー賞最終候補の話題作

  中東と思われる名前が不明の国に住む若い男女Saeed（サイード）とNadia（ナディア）は、夜間のビジネス・スクールで出会った。保険会社に勤務するナディアは全身を覆う黒い衣装を身に着けているが、それは身を守るためであり、宗教的ではないと言う。広告代理店勤務のサイードは、そんなミステリアスなナディアに恋心を抱く。 いっぽう、政府軍と宗教右派ゲリラの間の争いは激しさを増し、無実の者が処刑されたり、住処が破壊されたりするようになっていた。その最中でも、サイードとナディアは、ふつうの若者たちのようにデートを続ける。 だが、二人が務めていた職場が閉鎖し、インターネットや電話もつながらないようになり、家族と絶縁しているナディアはサイードの両親の家に同居することになった。サイードは結婚したがるが、ナディアは躊躇する。 内戦が深刻になるなか、世界中で、空間をショートカットする扉が開く異常現象が起きていた。 サイードの人生を変える悲劇が起きたことをきっかけに、二人はこの国を離れることを考えるようになった。二人は、扉を利用する秘密組織に大金を払って外国に逃げた……。 戦場であっても、サイードとナディアのように若者は仕事をしながら夜間学校に通い、マリワナを吸い、恋をする。作者Hamidの淡々とした語りを読むうちに、ナチス・ドイツでゲットーに移されたユダヤ人たちのことを思い出した。どんな環境でも、人は静かに日常生活を続けていこうとする。平和な生活では本人たちすら忘れている人間の強さがここにある。 人間の絆もそうだ。 だが、その強さが、安全な状況になるとなぜか揺らぐ。この小説Exit Westでも、多くの犠牲を払って祖国を後にしたというのに、安全な土地に移動したサイードとナディアはおとぎ話のようなハッピーエンドを得ることができない。よりましな場所を求めて次の扉を通り抜けるたび、サイードとナディアの心は離れていく。 彼らのラブストーリーは、リアリスティックであり、メロドラマに傾くことを避けたHamidの抑えた文章はブッカー賞の候補にふさわしい。 しかし、私にとってはやや期待はずれだった。 ひとつは、せっかくのマジックリアリズムがあまり有効ではないところだ。 「もし難民の移動が簡単だったらどうなるだろう？」という問いを、「世界中で扉が開く」スペキュラティブ・フィクションの形にした発想はすばらしい。だが、Hamidはそれ以上スペキュラティブ・フィクションの自由さを使おうとしないのだ。そこにとてもがっかりした。 また、新世界に移ってから次第に疑い深く、そして宗教深くなっていくサイードには説得力があるが、ナディアは、西洋の文化に慣れたイスラム教徒の男性が勝手に想像した女性像のような感じで、納得できなかった。 イスラム教をまったく信じておらず、マリワナを吸い、恋人との精神的なコミットメントを避け、後に特に自問することもなくバイセクシュアルになるナディアが、西洋社会に移住しても全身を覆う黒い衣装を着続ける理由も、ひとりの女として、ひとりの移民として、まったく納得できなかった。 この手の「フェミニズム」は、第三者が自分の都合が良いように作っているだけではないだろうか？ 「自分が着たいから着ている」という女性がいても、それは、赤ん坊のときからそれが「常識」の社会で育てられたからであって、純粋に自分自身の内声ではないと思う。私は、男性ガイドの強いアドバイスで、モロッコで全身と頭を包む黒い衣装を着て観光をした。そのほうが「安全」であり、「受け入れられる」と言われたからだ。 だが、それが楽だとは思わなかったし、心地良いとも思わなかった。 ナディアの中身が急進的な女性だと設定したのであれば、異なる文化に棲みついてからも「異質の者」と見られることを彼女が選ぶ理由をしっかりと書いてもらいたかった。 増える難民に反感を覚えるロンドンが、オリジナルの住民が住む場所と難民が住む場所を分ける部分にもBrexitを反映した政治的なメッセージを感じた。だが、そのメッセージがうまく伝わっているかどうかは疑問だ。このままでは、もともと反感を抱いている読者に「そりゃあ分けても仕方ないよな」と思われてしまいそうだ。 小説に政治的なメッセージが含まれているのは大いに結構だが、説得力を持って欲しい。 このような理由で、前半だけなら星５つだが、後半部分で星４つ評価になってしまった

• Exit West Exit West written by Mohsin Hamid created ripples in literature circles and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2017. This short, lyrical book tells us the story of Saeed and Nadia, two young lovers from an unknown city from an unnamed country. We know that the time period is contemporary because of the presence of mobile phones and internet and surveillance tools like cameras and drones. At the onset, as Saeed and Nadia struggle to live in their city, we realise how violence and fear of violence changes everyday life. people keep away from windows, procuring a joint becomes mighty difficult, everyone hordes food, visiting a lover becomes sporadic, funerals are quick and hushed and everyone dreams of door. As things get worse in the city that they live in, fundamentalism and violence rising hand in hand, people desperately hope for things to get better until this hope gives in to despair and then the desperate need to flee. This is a tale of desperation, of hope, and love and what violence does to people. Saeed’s family hopes for things to get better, but instead they get worse. His mother dies, literally blown to pieces. Saeed and Nadia seek a way out, they have heard that magical doors take people to faraway lands, lands which are safe. Saeed’s father refuses to accompany them, preferring to stay put and wait for his end. Saeed is left with no option but to leave him behind; but his father’s death takes a toll on him. The only element of magic in this book is the magical ‘doors’ which transport people to different places. Through these doors Saeed and Nadia exit their country and go to Mykonos, a Greek island, then to London and ultimately San Francisco. Though at one level, ‘door’ is an interesting metaphor, it does injustice to the entire refugee experience. Being a refugee, an illegal migrant means facing innumerable physical hardships, and risk, even risking life to live across borders. This aspect goes unmentioned, but Hamid does a great job of exploring the psychology of exile – confused experiences of adapting to new surroundings, language, new xenophobias mixed with the pain of losing one’s home and loved ones. These magical doors also point to the inadequacy of local governments in controlling immigration. The book in a painful-beautiful way show how two individuals grow in a different way, reacting differently to the turmoil that they are in. they are helpless in the sense that they have no control of the larger forces that form their circumstances, and yet in each action they exercise their agency choosing to be who they want to be. Saeed and Nadia are both young secular people, who are hardly religious. Nadia wears a black robe to protect herself from unwanted advances, smokes joints and does psychedelic mushrooms in the beginning, continues to be fiercely independent, but for some unknown reason perhaps even unknown to her continues to do even when she is not required to, and continues to be secular, more adaptive and enthused by her changed circumstances. Saeed on the other hand finds it more difficult to adapt, feeling guilty for his father’ death, carrying a sense of unbelonging. He prays, and he prays more. He becomes religious, for it is only prayer that brings him momentary peace. Life of course continues to be difficult for them. There is perhaps a surety of living, but ‘she wondered whether she and Saeed had done anything by moving, whether the faces and buildings had changed but the basic reality of their predicament had not’. The book between Saeed and Nadia weakens over time. Their refugee status takes a toll on them and they go from being lovers, to friends to nothing. They drift away, only to meet briefly half a century later in the city that they came from, where there is relative peace since they time that they left. Saeed and Nadia are the only two persons named in the book. Their full names are not given. Although the plot focuses on Saeed and Nadia it is intercepted by many other smaller stories. The author tries to bring in simultaneity, how multiple incidences happen at the same time. This bring lends temporality and spatial dimension to the book. The book is beautiful as it manages to give us a microscopic view of Saeed and Nadia’s life and simultaneously giving us a bird’s eye view of the larger picture. Other people and their lives feature regularly. The book captures the present refugee crisis very well. In a globalized world, people are always connected to others through the internet and other means, and yet there is a feeling of unbelonging. ‘The news in those days was full of war and migrants and nativists, and it was full of fracturing too, of regions pulling away from nations, and cities pulling away from hinterlands, and it seemed that as everyone was coming together everyone was also moving apart’. Is this not an accurate description of our globalized times? It is interesting that the country and Saeed and Nadia remain unnamed. It could be anywhere. This renders a quality of universality of experience. How is the experience of Rohingya refugees any different from those fleeing Afganistan or Syria or any other war torn country? And this university of experience, of sorrow and suffering, but also strong ties of love, makes this book and its people human. ‘A feeling that we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another.’

• One of the most original novelas I have read lately. It is the mix between a fantasy and a social plot (refugees)

• Great book. Quick read. Really well developed characters. Interesting story. I got all the feels reading this. Very insightful and thought provoking as well

• tolles buch, kann man lesen

• The first thing brought to mind as I read this phenomenal novel by Mohsin Hamid was Bob Dylan's song, 'A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall'. I especially remembered these lines though so much of Dylan's song is applicable to this novel: I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall The novel begins with Saaeed meeting Nadia. Theirs is love at first sight. They are living in a war-strewn nation and the only way to escape is through 'doors', doors that come and doors that go, doors of light and doors of dark, real doors and metaphorical ones. As time goes by, the doors are getting harder to find and more precious to access since everyone wants to leave. The identity of their first nation is never revealed but it could be any impoverished and chaotic place where the rule of law no longer exists and the mighty bow to the sword. Saaeed gives the impression, at first, that he is a liberated man, but it is Nadia, despite wearing a burka and dressing all in black, that is the real feminist. They find a door that leads them to Mykonos, a Greek Island. They stay for a while, even attaining their own room, but then decide to try a new door. Door after door - immigration from one vast and frightening locale to another, no door leading to peace and salvation, no door leading to safety and beauty. All doors have their risks and yet these two young people feel compelled to leave one place after another. Are they searching for something that is impossible to find or are they victims of a myth, a living allegory to Heraclitus's belief that one can never step into the same river twice. I found this book compelling, a vast and deliberate myth of migration, such as the travels of certain birds, fish, and mammals. Some travel to reproduce while other travel to end their lives. There is an innate desire to travel in order to begin or end one's life. I also viewed it as an allegory of our time, a novel of the cruelty and inhumane aspects of any place one might land on this earth. Despite hope, despite desperation, neither of the protagonists really knew what they wanted or what they were looking for. There is certainly the adventure of youth, the desire to escape cruelty and have one's basic needs met but there is more than that. And what that more consists of is the basis question of this novel. Is it love? Is it beauty? Is it peace? Is it freedom? For every reader, there will be a different answer. My initial thoughts are that the answer rests with knowledge, that through knowledge we gain experience, and from experience, we gain wisdom. As Mr. Dylan so articulately states at the end of his poem/song when he asks his son what he'll do no, he is answered by this refrain: I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest Where the people are many and their hands are all empty Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison Where the executioner's fact is always well hidden Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten Where black is the color, where none is the number And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breath it And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin' But I'll know my song well before I start singin' And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

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