Uncanny Journeys: Magical Realism in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West and Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise

Document Type : Original Article

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Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Alexandria University

Abstract

This article presents a reading of two contemporary novels, Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) and Omar El-Akkad’s What Strange Paradise (2021), in the light of magical realism. The article first attempts to define magical realism as a genre loaded with potential. Bringing together two works, the first by a British-Pakistani writer and the second by an Egyptian-Canadian writer, it argues that these novels use magical realism as a global genre and infuse reality with fantasy to re-write the narrative of the refugee. Looking at the journeys in the novels not only as itineraries but also as narrative and literary modes, the article reflects on the use of certain fantastical “uncanny” (to borrow Freud’s term) literary devices within those texts to unsettle the dichotomy between the world of the real and the world of imagination in which both characters and readers decipher routes of navigating the unheimlich. The article thus shows magical realism’s subversive potential and its ability to engage contemporary issues.

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