Gratuitous Reference to Multiple Personality in “Exit West” by Mohsin Hamid (post 2): It is unwarranted by character development or plot.

“Nadia sat on the steps of a building reading the news on her phone…and…she thought she saw online a photograph of herself sitting on the steps of a building reading the news on her phone…and she was startled, and wondered how this could be…and she almost felt that if she got up and walked home at this moment there would be two Nadias, that she would split into two Nadias…and two different lives would unfold for these two different selves…” (p. 157).

“Reading the news at that time one was tempted to conclude that the nation was like a person with multiple personalities, some insisting on union and some insisting on disintegration…” (p. 158).

This novel is not in the habit of invoking psychiatric conditions to describe experiences of its major characters or the collective psychology of the general public. So it is surprising that the novel does so in these two instances, and that, of all psychiatric conditions, it chooses multiple personality.

When a novel has descriptions of, or references to, multiple personality that are not warranted by character development or plot, I call it “gratuitous multiple personality” (search), which I interpret as a reflection of the author’s psychology.

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