Setting: The novel begins in an unnamed country, but its protagonists are quickly forced to migrate to Mykonos, London, and finally Marin, California.

Genre: Migrant Literature, Contemporary Fiction.

Since then, the rebel groups seeking to overthrow al-Assad have started fighting with one another, and the entire conflict has produced a large-scale refugee crisis, sending Syrians into foreign countries that refuse to welcome them. Since then, there has been a complex armed conflict in Syria between a group led by the country’s war-criminal president, Bashar al-Assad, and multiple nongovernmental-and in some cases radicalized-forces trying to overthrow him. The Syrian Civil War began in 2011 as an offshoot of The Arab Spring, a multi-nation period of protest and unrest originating in Tunisia in 2010. However, it’s worth mentioning the vast number of refugees who have been forced to flee Syria in recent years due to the Syrian Civil War, as this was the most prevalent humanitarian catastrophe unfolding when Exit West was published in 2017 and beyond. Because there are so many conflicts currently driving people from their homes all over the world, it would be impossible to pinpoint the specific historical occurrences that pertain to Exit West. Part of Hamid’s genius in writing Exit West lies in his decision to avoid naming Nadia and Saeed’s home country, thereby universalizing their experience as refugees while referencing the global refugee crisis as a whole. Hamid writes for dozens of magazines, journals, and newspapers, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. His third novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, was released in 2013, and his fourth, Exit West, appeared in 2017 and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. He didn't complete another novel until 2007, when he published The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which reflects both his experiences at Princeton and his reflections about the post 9/11 world. Moth Smoke was a success in the United States and a huge hit in Pakistan (it was even adapted as a TV miniseries), enabling Hamid to devote himself to writing full-time. In his spare time, he worked on a novel he had begun writing as an undergraduate at Princeton in 2000, he published this work, Moth Smoke. He attended Harvard Law School, but found it boring. At the age of 18, he attended Princeton University and graduated summa cum laude (with highest honors).

After the age of nine, Hamid returned to Pakistan with his family and attended Aitchison College, a highly prestigious boarding school founded in the late 19th century. Mohsin Hamid was born in Pakistan, but he spent much of his childhood in Palo Alto, California while his father pursued a PhD at Stanford University.

How to get rich in rising asia