Exit West

by

Mohsin Hamid

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The Musician Character Analysis

Nadia’s first lover, whom she meets at a jam session before the city has been taken over by radical militants. The first person she ever has sex with, the musician presents himself as a promiscuous man uninterested in pursuing an emotional relationship. Still, the couple meets frequently to have sex, and Nadia assumes the musician doesn’t want anything beyond their physical relationship. She breaks things off with the musician when she and Saeed start dating. After Nadia divulges that she wants to end things, the musician suggests they go have sex one final time. She agrees, and the casual couple goes to his apartment for the last evening they ever spend together. Hamid reveals, though, that the musician almost immediately comes to regret that he focused that night on having sex and on not telling Nadia how he deeply he truly felt about her. The musician’s regrets in the book are another example of the way that people think about the path they have taken, and wonder what a different path might have been like. The musician’s own path, though, is soon cut off: unbeknownst to Nadia, the musician is killed just “a few short months” later.
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