Radical hopefulness in Mohsin Hamid’s map of the world: A reading of Exit West (2017)

Abstract

ABSTRACT With a point of departure in Pheng Cheah’s idea of world as a temporal-normative category that encompasses universal humanity, this article discusses Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West as an urgent response to the need to rethink belonging in the current age of globalization and increased mobility across geographical spaces. This response draws on what Hamid calls “radical hopefulness” founded on empathy and solidarity embodied in the novel’s mapping of a world where migration and prayer are foregrounded as interconnective gestures that bring out shared humanity and hope for a world where “being with” supersedes notions of origin or national belonging. In the novel, migration and prayer pivot on connectivity and alternate ways of being in the world that, in Hamid’s response, function as radical, if not revolutionary, acts of worlding – in line with Cheah’s conception of the normative efficacy of world literature.