We are all migrants through time

History and geography in Mohsin Hamid's Exit West

Bibliographic Data

ID2179404
AuthorsShazia Sadaf (0000-0001-7829-6815)
Year2020
Volume56
Issue5
Pages636-647
Publication date2020-09-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17449855.2020.1820667
OpenAlexW3088573736
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited8

Exit West reflects a progressive shift in Pakistani anglophone literature from the familiar framework of postcolonial writing back to writing beyond the 9/11 era. Set in a post-Brexit–Trump world, this speculative fiction seeks to democratize the future by re-imagining the relationship between history and geography, aligned with the dimensions of time and space. In Hamid's view, the present wish of humanity to go back towards past greatness poses a grave danger to the imagining of a progressive future. His novel therefore presents a radical future of global migration imagined through the magical portals that allow instant access to destinations around the world, challenging border divisions. This article argues that this turn towards speculative postcolonial fiction opens literary doors into cognitive spaces of contestation as well as meaningful dialogues in a post-post-9/11 world of global insecurity and anti-immigration sentiments that have contributed to far reaching events like Brexit

Aesthetics · Art · Brexit · Greatness · Humanity · Immigration · Literature · Media studies · Political science · Sociology · World history · Cuban History and Society · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · History · Law

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