How would you describe Nadia and Saeed both in their outward personalities as well as their inner thoughts? What attracts them to one another?

“Exit West” begins with two people meeting in a city “swollen by refugees but still mostly at peace, or at least not yet openly at war” — setting the scene for what’s to come. Throughout the book, as the city descends into war, Hamid never mentions the place’s name. Why?

Even as the city descends into war, and events become increasingly scary, Hamid rarely tells us how the characters feel. Why do you think that is?

“War in Saeed and Nadia’s city revealed itself to be an intimate experience,” the narrator states. In what ways are violence and intimacy linked throughout the novel? How does violence bring Saeed and Nadia together? How do you think their relationship might have evolved if their city had never been under siege?

What function do the doors serve, physically and emotionally, in the novel? Why do you think Hamid chose to include this speculative, fantastical element in an otherwise very “realistic” world?

As the book follows its two main characters, Nadia and Saeed, readers also meet a thief in Australia, a suited man targeting women in Tokyo and an old man whose house is being surrounded by military men in San Diego, among others. We never meet these characters again. What do you think is the purpose of these interludes?

How does the hardship of exile change Saeed? How does it change Nadia, who seems more adaptable? Most of all, how does it test—and ultimately change—their relationship?

The book ends in the city of Nadia and Saeed’s birth, which Hamid writes seems to them both familiar and unfamiliar. How did you feel about this book’s ending?

Near the end of the novel, an old woman in Palo Alto muses about her changing neighborhood, “It seemed to her that she too had migrated, that everyone migrates, even if we stay in the same houses our whole lives, because we can’t help it. We are all migrants through time.” What do you think she means?

Do you think Exit West is a hopeful book? Why or why not?