Such a great premise: two young people in an unnamed Middle Eastern country fall in love. As their city falls into civil war, they escape through a magic portal to London, and from there to America.
But unfortunately there was so much that didn't work for me.
Firstly, Nadia - everything about her was sexualised, even going to the toilet. I also didn't like how she finds love with another woman - it seemed too convenient and too easy a way out (I couldn't imagine Hamid exploring the male character's gay side.
I also couldn't get on with the narrative style: an omniscient narrator who repeats information within one sentence making too much seem portentous, and who skims over the surface of the two lovers so that I wasn't ever able to connect with them fully.
Lots of readers have complained about Hamid adding an unnecessary speculative element (the magic doors that allow the couple to move countries). I didn't have a problem with the doors being there - they might have been a good way to show what could happen with super mass migration (although this was never fully explored) but I had a problem with how they worked. They always seemed to lead from poor / war-torn countries to wealthy ones. How's that work then??
And I also had a problem with the lack of politics. Not that I want politics in my fiction but its lack in this novel was almost obtrusive.