The Making of Mohsin Hamid's Exit West

The distance soon closed. Two friends travelled across the internet to share their memories of creating a novel. Witnessing this recalled Hamid’s description of the origin of Exit West: ‘It seems so easy to imagine just stepping through [the screen of a video call] and being there. And then I thought, what if we could? The idea of people being able to move is in some way approximated by technology – our consciousness moves like that when we’re watching TV or looking at the news online. We are moving through this portal, our consciousness is going across the planet, across the galaxy, across centuries.’

For the duration of our conversation I found that I was, in the most delightful of ways, superfluous. Having not seen each other in person for two years, Hamid and Prosser seemed hungry for each other’s memories, and what was meant to be a conversation about a few archival materials digressed quite naturally into recollections of the dinners, correspondence, disagreements and triumphs associated with them. This led to musings on the nature of book production itself: what is the role of an editor? What is the importance of literary prizes? Perhaps most striking was the mention of Hamid’s wife, Zahra, who, though absent, featured prominently in both editor and writer’s explanations of the way in which elements of the novel had come about. As with the dinners, the notebook pages, the time spent, she was evoked lovingly and at length.

The resultant conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. It nevertheless retains Hamid and Prosser’s consideration of the migratory legacies of Exit West, both through the novel’s creation, and its subsequent generational enactments. 

Jo Hamya

MOHSIN 
It’s interesting because Simon and I have been working together since my second novel. The association and friendship with Simon began around the time The Reluctant Fundamentalist was done. My first two novels [Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist] took fifteen years, with fourteen years between them, and were draft after draft, after draft – just groping in the wilderness. The subsequent three [How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, Exit West and The Last White Man] have fitted Simon’s description very well. The first two books had many drafts that looked almost nothing like the finished book. It was me crawling until I met Simon and began to walk, basically. These notes here were me thinking about ‘this kind of a story, this kind of a form’.  I’ll write about some language, some random ideas and some characters…but as Simon has said, it then keeps evolving. My first two novels evolved on the page for several years with drafts.

The last three novels, including Exit West and the book that’s forthcoming, evolved in my head quite substantially. Those novels had maybe ten, twenty pages of abandoned drafts, but would only be two, three weeks of trying something, finding it doesn’t work, and moving on. Which is an enormously improved process from the old way, which was just write an entire book and then throw it away and then try to write it again. What you see here on this page was the notion, in a sense, of migration, but very specifically, a migration related to partition and the departures of Hindus from Pakistan. And that things were going to happen in a surreal or not entirely real fashion. Also the idea of being quite story-telling focused. That last point is significant because the novel before this, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, was a novel that was quite concerned with how books work, and what a novel is, and what the relationship between a reader and writer is. I wanted in this book to step away from those overt concerns and more towards a story-telling mode.

MOHSIN 
There was a first step that I’m not even sure Simon is aware of. Long ago, shortly after The Reluctant Fundamentalist was published, Simon and Anya [Simon’s wife], and Zahra and I were invited down to this Arts in Marrakesh festival, where we stayed in this old city courtyard house which had been converted into a hotel. And at one point, we talked about migration, and I remember saying that it’s a mistake to think of people as migrants and non-migrants. That actually migration is a universal human experience, and that we experience it as a movement through time; through each time period we enter into, not just one second after the other, although that too, but each time we wake up in the morning. Every year that passes, every decade, we arrive into a time we haven’t been in before. In the sense of us all being migrants through time, there’s something quite universal and fundamental to what it is to be a human being. The ‘being’ part of human is the temporal aspect.

So, that idea stayed. And eventually it became the kernel around which Exit West formed. What then brought it to life was this notion of the doors. I had come back to Pakistan, and was having conversations with people in London and New York where I had lived previously, often times like this: over video-call. This idea of looking through this window, of looking at someone like Simon through this magical door, made me think: what if we could actually step through? I mean, I know Simon’s office and Simon’s house well. Those are familiar places to me. And so that idea arrived, and when that idea arrived, the sort of nascent ‘all migrants through time’ idea was waiting for it. The two came together and made the novel.

That was how Exit West was really born: it happened after the notes, it happened after the Marrakesh festival, it happened after I moved back to Pakistan. It was really the coming together of those two things. What you’ll see in the proto-draft of these two materials is that the novel was called All Migrants Through Time – 

And then, Zahra and I were in Dubai for some reason, as this was happening. We needed a new title, and I was typing stuff onto my phone because I wasn’t at home, I didn’t have my desk, my notebooks, or anything. I was just typing in title after title, and texting to them to Zahra so that I would have some record of what I was doing. She rejected title after title. I was getting more and more irritated. And then she said, ‘Oh, I have an idea! To Exit West.’ And I said, ‘That’s so wrong, I don’t even know where to begin. I think you misunderstood the book, and I can’t believe this is happening—’ And we go on, with the cab guy sitting there in silence, until I say, ‘I have an idea. Exit. West.’ She says, ‘That’s almost exactly what I said!’ I said, ‘No it’s completely different! They’re unrelated. It’s nothing to do with yours.’ So basically, Zahra came up with the title for the book. Her To Exit West became Exit West.

When I told Simon and Becky about this one, they were happy. Then, as fate would have it, I was flying through JFK airport in New York, and on exiting the airport there was a sign, with orange and black and yellow lettering that said, exit west. And I guess there were others, exit east, exit south; but that was the exit I passed out of. It seemed like fate. So that was the tortuous journey to that title. It’s the only one of my titles that involved this much anguish. But I think this is why you have editors. They save you from the mistakes you are completely committed to making.

SIMON [laughing] 
Aw, that’s very generous. We had to pay an awful lot to have that sign put up at JFK. I know how much you worked for that title, and I still think it could have been the one. But Exit West just has a force that carries the book in a very good way. It sets up certain associations in the mind that are really helpful when you’re reading the book without giving too much away.

MOHSIN 
So the way I would get these notes is that she’d sit me down and talk me though these ideas. But she would usually have something like this, that she would have written down. So it’s entirely possible that, ‘the scene at the orphanage: don’t love the description,’ for example, which is note number four here, would have been couched a bit more gently in conversation. But I’m honestly not sure that it would bother me.

I also get notes from Simon and Becky, or my agent, Jay: the four people who ever read my stuff before it’s published. You find people who you know are committed to your project and supportive. You develop a relationship with people you feel are on your side. You recognise that the comments you’re getting are not from people who are trying to get you to write a different book, or the book that they would want to see exist in the world. Rather, and I think this is what a good editor brings, they are people who understand what you are trying to do. And then you do what you want to do better. I think these sorts of comments are entirely intended to make the book more the book I wished it was. To that extent, to be very direct is actually helpful.

Maybe the idea that these notes are brutal is something that comes out only because the underlying relationship is anything but. Simon, or Becky, or Zahra will say, ‘I love the book’, or even, ‘I love the book it’s going to become.’ Then they point out wrinkles where they stubbed their toe as they were passing through a particular chapter. I think something would be brutal if the energy of the editing were contrary to my desire for the energy of the book. What Simon and Becky and Zahra bring is energy that propels the idea for the book forward.

MOHSIN 
I think that there have been some bleak moments in these past few years for so many of us individually, but even for one’s political imagination. You think, how are things going to change? And I used to think that change happened over time as people modified their positions. And I think that does happen to an extent.

But I think we underestimate how much change happens when one generation dies off and the next one grows up. Right now the age demographics in places like Europe and the United States are so young-light and older-heavy because the birth rate has shrunk. People are having one kid instead of seven, and so there are many more middle-aged and older people, including myself. What we’re seeing is a big part of, in a way, youth not being expressed in our current politics. But that doesn’t mean that youth politics has gone away. At some point the Greta Thunbergs of the world will be seventy five, and when that happens and they’re the old conservative farts sitting around, just think about how radical the young people are going to be. 

I guess I had imagined, maybe, that these things could be accelerated. That there was a way to articulate a vision that would get people to be more accepting of the need to be more humane towards migrants. But now I think instead that it’s probably more likely to happen on a generational timescale. My kids have friends all over the world. Even as they play Minecraft, they’ve got some Slovenian girl who is on my daughter’s coding team or whatever. I’ve gone from being a bit more pessimistic (and I did go through a period of profound pessimism) to now thinking, okay, maybe I just got the timeline wrong.

And as far as fiction is concerned…fiction can’t make change happen, but it can do the job of bringing into the imagination different visions of what life is. And once in the imagination, those ideas are fertile things, and people play with them, and grow up with them. I’ve grown up a bit about the timeline of things changing. But I haven’t lost my faith that they will change. 
 
One of the biggest changes for me that has come into my life is having kids. The sudden awareness of generational realities imposes itself on you.

MOHSIN 
I remember that day very, very well. There was a fantastic shortlist. Ali [Smith]’s book and George Saunders’ book, which won…wonderful books. I mean, it comes down to what these prizes are. You can imagine it a little bit like walking into a room and this sort of flirtation occurs. Somebody smiles at you or starts making a conversation. Now, maybe you wind up going home with that person, or spending a night with that person, which is certainly a fantastic outcome. But it’s also quite a wonderful story to have walked into the room, made eye-contact with this stranger, had a wonderful conversation, really felt great about yourself, and then gone off with your mates someplace else. In a sense, these prizes are unwarranted, undeserved sudden flirtations by this wonderful literary force, which is the Booker Prize, and they’re a lot of fun to be part of.

I don’t think it’s possible to pick the best novel of a year because doing so would imply that somebody is more important than the reader in determining what the best novel of the year is, and that of course is completely absurd. Each reader will decide for themselves what kind of relationship they had with a book. When we say that a book is the best book of the year, we just mean, it’s the book that I liked this year. But that said, to be admired on that stage, to have a book celebrated on that stage, is something that nobody is entitled to. If you have the good luck to have it once or twice, it’s a fantastic journey to have been on in life. I remember going to Guildhall with Simon twice. It’s a lot of fun! You’re in this place, there’s all this stuff, these books you love. Everybody’s dressed up. It’s great.

So in that sense, as Simon says, I said, look, we have to be the best losers in the history of this prize. Our goal is to be the winners of the losers of the prize contest. Let’s go and have as much fun and be as happy about this as we possibly can. Simon was there, Becky had come from America, my agent Jay had come. Zahra was there. It was like, if my book was getting married: these were the people I’d want there for my book’s wedding. And there they were. It was a real highlight of that book’s journey.

But I do think that although winning the prize does huge things for books in general, at the end of the day, something much smaller than the prize is much bigger, which is, what happens when a reader takes that text, and animates it to an actual experience, without which it is nothing. Those are the things that really matter.