Hisham Matar was born in New York City to Libyan parents, spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo, and has lived most of his life in London. His memoir The Return was the recipient of many awards, including the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the Rathbones Folio Prize. It was also shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Costa Biography Award, and a National Book Critics Circle Award. Matar is also the author of the novels In the Country of Men, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Anatomy of a Disappearance. His most recent book is A Month in Siena. Matar is a professor at Barnard College and Columbia University, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an honorary fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages.

"Riveting and humane . . . At the core of My Friends is a powerful juxtaposition of loneliness and camaraderie, self-reliance and dependence, which defines the outline of exile. . . ."--The Atlantic

"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

"A masterly literary meditation on [Matar's] lifelong themes."--The New York Times

"Such a success . . . My Friends is a significant novel, whose ambition and range are indicated by its long opening sentence, which winds between past and present."--Financial Times

"Matar weighs . . . complexities with tremendous sensitivity, and My Friends is not only indispensable for a full understanding of Libyan émigrés but is, more generally, a great novel of exile."--The Wall Street Journal

"Dazzling . . . a personal, deeply felt work . . . tightly structured and controlled, looping back and forth through time and memory, building on itself in a process of gradual expansion and revelation."--Toronto Star

"Matar channels Roberto Bolaño's theme of literary obsession in this sublime novel of a Libyan exile in London whose two friends return to Libya in 2011 to take part in the overthrow of Gadhafi. As the narrator describes his quest to understand life through literature, the novel's sense of truthfulness and urgency restores the reader's belief in what fiction can do."--Publishers Weekly, "Top 10 Pick of the Year"

"Hisham Matar is one of our greatest writers. How lucky we are to be in his midst."--Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King, shortlisted for the Booker Prize

"Hisham Matar's My Friends recounts an exile's life shattered by violence, yet sustained, fiercely if complicatedly, by friendship. An unforgettable novel--wise, urgent, and profound--from one of our era's great writers."--Claire Messud, author of The Emperor's Children

"My Friends is a brilliant novel about innocence and experience, about friendship, family, and exile. It makes clear, once more, that Hisham Matar is a supremely talented novelist."--Colm Tóibín, New York Times bestselling author of The Magician

"My Friends is Matar's most political novel, but also an intimate meditation on friendship and love and everything in between. It is deeply affecting, generous and wise, and all these virtues come in writing of extraordinary elegance, with one of those voices that you want to listen to for the rest of your life."--Juan Gabriel Vásquez, author of The Sound of Things Falling

"Very few writers alive can converse with negative space the way Matar does, and My Friends is stunning, beautiful proof."--Omar El Akkad, author of American War

Publisher: Random House Trade

Pub date: 2025-01-07

Length: 416 pages