My Friends
A Novel
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4.5 • 22 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • A “masterly” (The New York Times, Editors’ Choice), “riveting” (The Atlantic) novel of friendship, family, and the unthinkable realities of exile, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Return
“A profound celebration of the sustaining power of friendship, of the ways we mold ourselves against the indentations of those few people whom fate presses against us.”—The Washington Post
ONE OF PUBLISHER WEEKLY’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION • LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION
One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat, and has the sense that his life has been changed forever. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh.
There, thrust into an open society that is miles away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change. He attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London, only to watch it explode into tragedy. In a flash, Khaled finds himself injured, clinging to life, unable to leave Britain, much less return to the country of his birth. To even tell his mother and father back home what he has done, on tapped phone lines, would expose them to danger.
When a chance encounter in a hotel brings Khaled face-to-face with Hosam Zowa, the author of the fateful short story, he is subsumed into the deepest friendship of his life. It is a friendship that not only sustains him but eventually forces him, as the Arab Spring erupts, to confront agonizing tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his own sense of self against those closest to him.
A devastating meditation on friendship and family, and the ways in which time tests—and frays—those bonds, My Friends is an achingly beautiful work of literature by an author working at the peak of his powers.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Friendship bridges the gap between the personal and the political in this moving novel by British Libyan author Hisham Matar, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2016 memoir, The Return. In 1980, a 14-year-old Benghazi boy, Khaled, has his life changed when he reads the works of author Hosam Zowa. Years later, while studying in Scotland, Khaled attends a London protest where catastrophe strikes, leaving him injured and afraid that contacting his family back in Libya will put them in danger. But a chance meeting with his favourite author changes everything, making him feel less isolated. Matar frames his protagonist’s journey within the context of historic events, from an infamous real-life 1984 anti-Gaddafi demonstration to the 2011 Libyan revolution. Told through plainspoken prose and naturalistic dialogue, Matar’s gorgeous story has a lot to say about human nature and the bonds that tie humanity together.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pulitzer winner Matar (for The Return, a memoir) presents a poised and poignant story of a Libyan dissident exiled in the United Kingdom during the Qaddafi era. In 1983, 17-year-old Khaled leaves Benghazi to study literature in Edinburgh, where he meets excitable Mustafa. While attending an anti-Qaddafi protest in London they are both shot by pro-Libyan gunmen. They survive, and Khaled cuts himself off from his family so as not to endanger them back home. In 1995, Khaled cements a friendship with dissident writer Hosam Zowa, whose work has attracted the ire of the Qaddafi regime. The danger the three men face shapes their relationship, as Hosam initially suspects Khaled of being a secret agent for Qaddafi. Eventually, though, their solidarity and mutual love of literature contribute to a tight bond including Mustafa, which holds strong even after Hosam and Mustafa return to Libya in 2011 to join the Arab Spring uprising while Khaled stays behind in London. Khaled's elegiac ruminations never throttle the suspense as the characters continuously risk their lives for Libyan liberation. This is both a melancholic examination of the horrors of repression and a powerful ode to the freedom of speech.
Customer Reviews
A treasure
A wonderful and beautifully felt and written novel about a subject and place not often described.
Meandering
Interesting story about Libyan exiles who become friends. Well written and shows promise in spots as surprising events unfold; but ultimately mostly meanders with the protagonist’s seemingly self-absorbed and self-pitying ruminations.