The Loss of the Real Tale: The Postmodern Case of Migration in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West

Abstract

We are all migrants, and with that, Hamid starts a discourse of migration that is to be either questioned or celebrated. Hamid’s celebrated novel Exit West is considered an emblem of migration and hence accepted as such. The nature of migration and the notions attached to it in the novel call for an investigation into the generated view of displacement and latency of locomotion in the world of science fiction. Thus, this research paper aims to dissect the elements of postmodernity in Hamid’s conception of migration, analyses his attempt at universalizing the experience of migrants, and disingenuous claim of representation in his novel Exit West. Further, this research paper takes the liberty of discussing the discourse of hyperreality in postmodernism and associates it with Hamid’s utopian idea of teleportation. This research paper also claims that Hamid generates a ‘hyperreal’ image of the real that has absolutely no correspondence to reality and therefore, the tale of migration in Exit West is a tale of the loss of the real.