Magic Doors in “Exit West” by Mohsin Hamid: Which of the author’s three different explanations for magic doors most reflects his actual writing process?

In this novel, magic doors enable characters to migrate from one part of the world to another, instantaneously. How did the author come to use this fantasy literature device in this otherwise realistic novel?

In three interviews I found online, Hamid gave three different explanations. In one, he said that the novel was inspired by his own experience of being an immigrant, and that the magic doors were a way to minimize discussion of the trip from one country to another, which he felt was ultimately trivial.

In another interview, he said that he had been impressed with the way that modern technology makes international communication instantaneous; that magic doors were a metaphor for this; and that the novel evolved from the magic door metaphor.

In a third interview, when asked about the magic doors, he said that during the fiction writing process, a novelist believes in the reality of his characters, and he believed in their magic doors, too.

The third interview sounds most candid about his actual writing experience, while the first two sound like plausible, ex post facto, rationalizations.

A more general question is why magic doors, or magic portals of one sort or another, are such a common literary device (Alice, Harry Potter, etc). It probably reflects things widely experienced in the fiction writing process.

Mohsin Hamid. Exit West. New York, Riverhead Books, 2017.