A book that manages to maintain both a very broad and a very tight focus. In the grand scheme it’s about migration and refugees, how people try to make a life when they’ve lost everything in the world that they know. The sole aspect of magical realism is the existence of doors, which mysteriously connect one part of the world to another. Someone can step through a doorway in the Philippines and exit in a closet in Germany; or, as our protagonists do, leave a war-torn, crumbling Middle Eastern city and emerge on the Mediterranean seaside. The couple at the tight focus, Saeed and Nadia, do indeed manage this escape, but not without pain and loss; the book doesn’t give them an easy journey, realistically anticipating the kind of treatment that awaits unwanted refugee arrivals. Saeed and Nadia go through a lot; running away together is hard, staying together is harder, and staying true to yourself under such pressure is hardest of all. The way Hamid writes reminds me of Salman Rushdie; he favors long, flowing, beautiful run-on paragraphs that end, abruptly, on hard and piercing truths.