Photo: Screenshot/PBS NewsHour
In a year of intense competition, Amazon has assigned fourth place to Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West on its 2017 list of top books.
The novel Exit West is a story on some of the critical issues of our times including immigration, conflicts and disconnects between civilizations. Yet, at times, the story appears to move in a fabled fashion like when two lovers escape conflict in their homeland and go through various experiences as they take refuge in another country.
“Yes I’m pro-migrant. I personally tend to believe that there is a right to migration in the same way that there’s a right to love whom you like, to believe what you believe, and to say what you want to say,” Hamid told National Public Radio’s Morning Edition in an interview on his work Exit West.
Hamid’s earlier novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist published in 2007 was a hit, winning several literary awards.
While introducing readers to Exit West, Amazon notes that Hamid “upends our cultural assumptions and stakes an optimistic claim for the enduring pleasures of imagination and narrative, even in the midst of war.”
Amazon.com selections for the Best Books of 2017 ranks David Grann’s nonfiction Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI on the top.
The annual list features across various categories ranging from literary fiction and mystery to children’s and young adult.
“All lists are hand-selected by Amazon’s team of editors – who read hundreds of thousands of pages throughout the year – first by choosing the best books of every month and then, finally, the best books of the year,” the tech giant said.
“In a year when there were many strong contenders for Best of the Year, David Grann’s book offered readers something exceptional,” said Sarah Harrison Smith, Editorial Director of Books and Kindle at Amazon.com.
Little Fires Everywhere, a novel by Celeste Ng and Beartown, a Novel by Fredrik Backman are featured second and third on Amazon’s list for 2017.
