Author(s): Hisham Matar

General Fiction

By the Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Return comes an astonishing new novel about friendship, set between London and Libya in the 1980s and the present

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. Government officials open fire, killing a policewoman and wounding eleven Libyan demonstrators. Both friends are critically injured and their lives are 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.

Matilda Bookshop Review

This is the story of three Libyan men who live in exile in London, bound together by their strong friendship and war torn past. A story of strong friendships, families, books and holding on to your cultural identity through adversity. I found the writing to be rich in language and history and was a real joy to read. Any book that brings humanity to an often (an currently) maligned/misunderstood region of the world deserves praise, especially one as eloquently written as this. Simon