by Hisham Matar (UK/Libya)
Paperback ISBN: 9780241987032
Pages: 464

links political history with private feeling.

Khaled and Mustafa meet at university in Edinburgh: two Libyan eighteen-year-olds expecting to return home after their studies. In a moment of recklessness and courage, they travel to London to join a demonstration in front of the Libyan embassy. When government officials open fire on protestors in broad daylight, both friends are wounded, and their lives forever changed.

Over the years that follow, Khaled, Mustafa and their friend Hosam, a writer, are bound together by their shared history. If friendship is a space to inhabit, theirs becomes small and inhospitable when a revolution in Libya forces them to choose between the lives they have created in London and the lives they left behind.

About the author

Hisham Matar is a British-Libyan novelist and essayist. He studied at Goldsmiths, University of London, and has written for major outlets including The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. He is also the author of the memoir The Return, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and My Friends was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.

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