Love in the ruins

The Man Booker Prize longlist is out, and among the competing authors is Mohsin Hamid, the bestselling Pakistani scribe of The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013).

His longlisted novel Exit West is arguably his most ambitious yet. It tells a fantastical tale of a pair of lovers struggling against the backdrop of war, upheavals and the refugee crisis. They flee their homelands via magical wormholes and travel to Mykonos, London and San Francisco. But happiness eludes them. Tackling a range of pertinent issues from theological politics to…