Can Xue

‘The internet - in the form of social media, at least - is much more like fiction than it is anything else.’ 

Read a discussion between Mohsin Hamid and his editor, Simon Prosser, about the creative process involved in writing Exit West.

With so many titles in the Booker Library imagining terrifying scenarios for humanity, it is tempting to wonder which of those fictional nightmares may be rediscovered as grim truth by future readers – and shocking to observe the extent to which some have already become reality 

Winner of the Booker Prize 2022, Shehan Karunatilaka’s rip-roaring epic is a searing, mordantly funny satire set amid the murderous mayhem of a Sri Lanka beset by civil war. Read our extract from the book’s first section