As if by Magical Realism: A Refugee Crisis in Fiction

Mohsin Hamid is, along with Salman Rushdie, one of the most powerful ”postcolonial voices" in British literature to employ elements of magical realism in order to fictionally recreate a hectic contemporary history that seems to be moving faster than ever. People desperately flee from violent civil wars, seeking refuge, and politics of inclusion flourishes in Europe in response. Against this background, drawing inspiration from various violent events, like the Syrian Civil War, the fall of Mosul and the Yemeni Civil War, as well as from his personal migrant experience, Hamid publishes his fourth novel, Exit West, equally personal and political as his other novels, most notably, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, dedicated to the events of 9/11. The paper aims to analyse Exit West from the perspective of this relation between the personal and the political, tracing the role of magical realism in opening the doors towards the painfully realistic construction of otherness.