Hi Johannes, My book club was also very intrigued by the door image, which at one point in the novel was described as pure darkness, "the heart of darkness." Then somehow we morphed into a discussion of whether Nadia's robe was a door. After some wrangling a few said yes, it too was a door.
I had an image of nested spheres rotating on various axes, doors alinging to open briefly then closing, leading to others a la the garden of forking paths. The group was talking over a rather marvelous carpet at the time, of Persian design it seemed to me and very delicate, filigreed, such involutions of tracery. It made me wonder, is the book a door, even a labyrinth? Is the world, language, time? So many choices, some forward some back, but time still irrevocable in what occurred to me as its "ambiguous benevolence." I haven't read the second half of the book yet, looking forward! All best, Max ________________________________ From: NetBehaviour <[email protected]> on behalf of Johannes Birringer <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2020 4:45 PM To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] book question hello: Ahmed Saadawi’s hallucinatory novel Frankenstein in Baghdad, and Mohsim Hamid's Exit West, i have to say I was impressed and mesmerized reading these novels The "Exit West" intrigued me much, as I started to read it during what was called the "refugee crisis" in Europe, basically a large wave of migration, partly caused by the sectarian and military conflict in Syria, well, refugees were all over, and when I tried to imagine what it must be like to live in a war torn land, or city, i got captivated by Hamid's story of the two young people who come to imagine fleeing. the image that I told my theatre students to explore and work with was Hamid's metaphor of the black door. This door idea is wonderful, a rumor spreads in the city that people are seeing black doors , or door frames, and when you walk through them, you exit, so to speak, and you end up in a very different place, california, miami, stockholm, berlin....... What a strange and interesting magical realist image. regards Johannes Birringer ________________________________________ From: NetBehaviour <[email protected]> on behalf of Max Herman via NetBehaviour <[email protected]> Sent: 13 February 2020 18:02 To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity Cc: Max Herman Subject: [NetBehaviour] book question Has anyone read Exit West? It was the last selection in my local book club and pretty interesting from the standpoint of networks I think. I've only read half of it so far though. 🙂 _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
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