Hamid's (The Reluctant Fundamentalist, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia) trim yet poignant fourth novel addresses similar themes as his previous work and presents a unique perspective on the global refugee crisis. In an unidentified country, young Saeed and burqa-wearing Nadia flee their home after Saeed's mother is killed by a stray bullet and their city turns increasingly dangerous due to worsening violent clashes between the government and guerillas. The couple joins other migrants traveling to safer havens via carefully guarded doors. Through one door, they wind up in a crowded camp on the Greek Island of Mykonos. Through another, they secure a private room in an abandoned London mansion populated mostly by displaced Nigerians. A third door takes them to California's Marin County. In each location, their relationship is by turns strengthened and tested by their struggle to find food, adequate shelter, and a sense of belonging among emigrant communities. Hamid's storytelling is stripped down, and the book's sweeping allegory is timely and resonant. Of particular importance is the contrast between the migrants' tenuous daily reality and that of the privileged second- or third-generation native population who'd prefer their new alien neighbors to simply disappear. Agent: Jay Mandel, WME Entertainment. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* In an unnamed city with strict social mores, young Nadia is a rebel, an atheist who chooses to live and work independently. In religious and unassuming Saeed she finds the perfect companion. As the two fall in love, their romance is tinged with a sense of urgency and inevitability as the city falls to militia, and basic freedoms and food quickly become rarities. When the situation turns dire, Saeed and Nadia decide to migrate as thousands already have and cobble together every last bit of their savings to find safe passage out. Caught in the whirlpool of refugees from around the world, Saeed and Nadia are tossed around like flotsam, the necessity of survival binding them together more than any starry-eyed notion of romance ever could. If at times the story of refugees facing no easy choice feels derivative, Hamid (How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, 2013) smooths over such wrinkles with spellbinding writing and a story of a relationship that sucks its own marrow dry for sustenance. The concept of the door is a powerful, double-edged metaphor here, representing a portal leading to a promised land that when closed, however, condemns one to fates from which there is no escape.--Apte, Poornima Copyright 2016 Booklist

"We are all migrants through time," observes Man Booker Prize short-lister Hamid (The Reluctant Fundamentalist). The impulses driving such a movement, especially when rooted in violent conflict, is at the core of Hamid's exceptional fourth novel. In an unnamed city (not unlike the author's native Lahore, Pakistan), Saeed and Nadia meet, find love, and expect to share a future, but a militant takeover forces them to flee their homeland. Hamid reveals their tenuous journey from a dreamlike distance that perfectly blends reality with fablelike parable. For example, escape happens through "doors" only accessible via the right contact at the right price. While focusing the narrative spotlight on his lovers-on-the-run, Hamid regularly interrupts the couple's peregrinations with snapshot interludes-a potential murder in Tokyo, a woman threatened in Vienna, an aging grandmother in Palo Alto-that serve as reminders that life (and death) continues for everyone else, everywhere else, every which way. Both mellifluous and jarring, this novel is a profound meditation on the unpredictable temporality of human existence and the immeasurable cost of widespread enmity. VERDICT Libraries would do well to acquire this and all of Hamid's extraordinary titles. [See Prepub Alert, 9/12/16.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian -BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A young couple meet and fall in love as their city disintegrates into violence in this spare, allegorical novel. Nadia is a free spirit who lives independently, while Saeed is faithful to the traditions of family and prayer. Any semblance of normal life, to say nothing of courtship, is obliterated by the danger surrounding them, so Nadia and Saeed decide they must find a way to escape. They learn of doors, fantastical portals that defy the laws of physics and grant passage to distant locations. It seems a stroke of great fortune when Nadia and Saeed access a door that takes them to a Greek island. But the respite is illusory. The world's population is on the move, and desperate migrants like Nadia and Saeed are swarming through doors in overwhelming numbers. The pair's love is tested as they ponder strategies for survival. Should they stay, or find another door? Hamid describes with fluid insight the displaced lovers' despair and longing for stability. His use of contemporary details such as cell phone dependence will remind readers that Nadia and Saeed are but a few steps removed from any college-age couple fleeing a homeland at war. VERDICT This short but potent work offers teens a visceral understanding of the world's refugee crisis. Those who are aware of the current political climate regarding immigration will be moved by this poignant love story.-Diane Colson, formerly at City College, Gainesville, FL © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

THE IMAGINEERS OF WAR: The Untold Story of Darpa, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World, by Sharon Weinberger. (Vintage, $17.) Few know much about Darpa - populated by a "procession of nuts, opportunists and salesmen," Weinberger tells us - but the group helped shape modern life and modern warfare. Some notable inventions: stealth aircraft, armed drones, Agent Orange and even the internet. EXIT WEST, by Mohsin Hamid. (Riverhead, $16.) In this elegant meditation on refuge, exile and home, a couple flee their unnamed country riven by civil war. Hamid weaves the surreal into his tale: Magic doors separate the dangers of home from the perils of a new life. The novel, one of the Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2017, is this month's pick for the PBS NewsHourNew York Times Book Club. STEVEN SPIELBERG: A Life in Films, by Molly Haskell. (Yale, $15.) A feminist critic's take on the filmmaker focuses on his Jewish identity. Praising the match between biographer and subject, our reviewer, Lisa Schwarzbaum, wrote, "The exploration here is lively, the critic is deeply informed and she approaches her mandate with a calmness of inquiry that is a gift often bestowed on the outsider anthropologist impervious to tribal influences." UNIVERSAL HARVESTER, by John Darnielle. (Picador, $16.) At the local Video Hut where Jeremy works as a clerk, someone begins splicing violent, vaguely malevolent scenes into the tapes, and his Idaho town is shaken. As his friends and family are consumed by the phenomenon, Jeremy pursues the mystery, culminating in a final reckoning at the remote farm where the scenes were filmed. Darnielle, the lead singer for the band the Mountain Goats, counteracts the sinister with acute sensitivity in this story, his second novel. WHY TIME FLIES: A Mostly Scientific Investigation, by Alan Burdick. (Simon & Schuster, $17.) Burdick, a New Yorker staff writer, investigates how we experience the passage of time: varying perceptions of duration; how humans agreed on the common measure of an hour. His account doesn't satisfy every question, but it opens up new lines of inquiry into the subtle and profound ways humans process time. NO ONE IS COMING TO SAVE US, by Stephanie Powell Watts. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $16.99.) A riff on "The Great Gatsby," this debut novel centers on the fates and fortunes of AfricanAmerican families in modern-day North Carolina As our reviewer, Jade Chang, put it, "Watts is interested in what black people are allowed to want - and allow themselves to want - in 21st-century America."