Mohsin Hamid’s novel, Exit West, utilizes a special narration style that is very unique to the novel, and it accomplishes a lot in terms of telling the story. Hamid’s sentences tend to ramble on for much longer than they traditionally would, lending itself to paragraphs and sometimes even pages that are entirely one sentence. These long sentences manage to contribute many different moods despite their similar structures.

One instance of this is on page 122, the second paragraph. It reads “They waited for a while but knew they could not stay in this hotel room forever…” then it continues on until the sentence concludes which “…they were in a house of some kind, surely a palace, with rooms upon rooms and marvels upon marvels, and taps that gushed water that was like spring water and was white with bubbles and felt soft, yes soft, to the touch.” This sentence, in contrast to the other example, reads very smoothly, gently, as though the sentence is the water described in it. It displays a feeling of peace and calm as well as admiration and awe. Even though this sentence is structured nearly identically to many others in the story, it conveys vast emotion on its own.

While most of the time, this serves the narrative in terms of managing to display a set of complex themes, it also distinguishes Hamid’s writing from the crowd. While these sentences can sometimes be quite the hassle to read, leaving any speaker out of breath and any reader winded, Exit West requires unique prose to tell the story effectively and thematically.

One key example of this is on page 74, where the long sentences serves to both elaborate on an emotion and also reveal a theme of the story. The sentence begins at the bottom of the page: “But part of her still resisted the idea of moving in with him…and also finding the idea of living as a chaste half-lover, half-sister to Saeed in close proximity with his parents rather bizarre, and she might have waited much longer had Saeed’s mother not been killed…stayed with them that night to offer what comfort and help she could and did not spend another night in her own apartment again.”

The interruption in the middle of the sentence, regarding Saeed’s mother’s death, shocks the reader just as if a loved one was killed in their own life: suddenly and without preface, interrupting their own thoughts about their life and way of being. It is in this way that Hamid manages to make the reader feel the same kind of grief as Nadia: missing someone important to characters in her life that she cares about despite having never known her, because all at once, Saeed’s mother is gone from the world.

A similar example that is less emotionally devastating is towards the end of the novel on page 230. While the sentence is shorter than the previous example it still manages to convey a great deal about the story: “Their conversation navigated two lives, with vital details highlighted and excluded, and it was also a dance, for they were former lovers….imagine how different it would be if I had agreed to have sex with you, and Nadia said we were having sex, and Saeed considered and smiled and said yes I suppose we were.”

In the ambling curves of this sentence, the reader can sense both the time that has passed and the fondness that still lingers between them. There is a bittersweetness in the words that is displayed by the long sentence, and it fills the reader with the same grief and joy that Nadia and Saeed are feeling in seeing each other again after all this time separated from each other.

It is in this way that Exit West requires its unique prose, especially when expertly wielded by an author like Hamid. Without these long, seemingly run-on sentences, Exit West would not have the same impact, and the deep humanity of the emotional writing as well as its complex, varied themes would be buried under more simple language, which would distract from the beauty and meaning of the story.