Quote by Mohsin Hamid: “We are all migrants through time.”

We think of migrants as people who cross borders — but all of us move through the different countries of our own lives: childhood, adulthood, loss, reinvention. Time displaces everyone. This reframing asks us to find common ground with those making physical journeys, because the experience of leaving something behind is universal.

Hamid published Exit West in 2017, a novel about two refugees escaping an unnamed country through magical doors. The global refugee crisis was at the centre of political debate from Europe to the US, and Exit West offered a profoundly humane counterpoint to the dehumanising language dominating immigration policy discussions.

Pakistani novelist whose books The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Exit West have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and translated into dozens of languages. His fiction explores migration, identity, and the human costs of global inequality.