DYSTOPIAN FUTURES: NEW CITY-SCRAPES
DYSTOPIAN FUTURES: NEW CITY-SCRAPES

Summary/Abstract: In the last 10 years Europe has seen unprecedented migration from the East to the West, while some countries have welcomed these migrants other countries have built walls and used riot police with tear gas to stem the flow of these unwanted strangers. In Mohsin Hamid’s dystopian novel "Exit West" (2017), time and space collapse into the emergence of failed cities where social disorder is rife. This study looks at the possibility of constant displacement, resurgent nationalism and those who exist on the periphery of the modern. In this ‘liquid modernity’ people disappear through magical doors, into new worlds where there is a growing conviction that change is the only permanence, and uncertainty is the only certainty. In these worlds, the characters act like tourists in search of multiple but fleeting social experiences. In Hamid’s dystopia, there is a new world order, one of impermanence, rootlessness and the growth of securitization.

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