Description

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2024
WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION
FROM THE PULITZER-PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR OF THE RETURN

‘A brilliant novel about innocence and experience, about friendship, family and exile’ COLM TOIBIN

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.

‘The first Booker contender of 2024 . . . a deeply touching, beautifully composed book’ Sunday Times

‘It is impossible to describe the profound depth and beauty of this book’ MAAZA MENGISTE, author of THE SHADOW KING

‘My Friends is both a complex and unsentimental meditation on what friendship means and a searingly moving exploration of how exile impacts those who are forced to live in this state of loss. It is a book that we loved for its spareness of language and its deeply affecting storytelling.’ Booker Prize Judges 2024

Publisher Review

I have always admired Matar's tender and compassionate but equally strong and compelling voice -- Elif Shafak 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 * It is impossible to describe the profound depth and beauty of this book. MY FRIENDS is a breathtaking novel, every page a miracle and an affirmation. If there is a language of exile, MY FRIENDS is what it sounds like: exquisite and painful, compassionate and unflinching, and above all, overwhelming in its boundless hope that within exile rests a path towards a different kind of return. One that leads us back to ourselves. Hisham 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 * 'I could not love this book more. Reflective, compelling, deeply tender at times, there are surprising shifts and turns and moments of utter brilliance where new understanding blooms. A walk across London from King's Cross Station to Shepherd's Bush gives rise to memories of a life diverted by a moment of political action. About friendship, exile, belonging, lives lived and not lived, and Libya's recent past, London emerges as a place of refuge, a transitory half-home even after three decades, a stepping stone. As soon as I finished, I started again beguiled by Matar's long, sinuous sentences and enlivened by my new knowledge of what it was all about, my heart moving in my chest. My Friends is the most beautiful, complete, masterful novel I have read in a long time. Read it.' -- Priscilla Morris, author of the Women's Prize shortlisted BLACK BUTTERFLIES Tender, precise, and incredibly moving, MY FRIENDS is a rare novel, holding so much of the human heart that it is at times unbearably real. It's impossible to read this book without feeling a renewed connection to the world and all its intricate sorrow and love. -- Sean Hewitt, author of ALL DOWN DARKNESS WIDE My Friends is quite possibly Hisham Matar's best work yet, and that's saying something. A quiet detonation of a novel, this masterful inquiry into the nature of friendship, exile and place is not so much to be read as lived through. The depth of thought, the unflinchingly honest confrontation with loss and longing, is there on every page, in every moment. 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 and WHAT STRANGE PARADISE 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 Vasquez 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 Toibin * I loved this sweeping yet intimate, powerful yet subtle tale of Libyan exiles in London and the way politics shapes lives. * The Bookseller * I have always admired Matar's tender and compassionate but equally strong and compelling voice -- Elif Shafak 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 Vasquez It is impossible to describe the profound depth and beauty of this book. MY FRIENDS is a breathtaking novel, every page a miracle and an affirmation. If there is a language of exile, MY FRIENDS is what it sounds like: exquisite and painful, compassionate and unflinching, and above all, overwhelming in its boundless hope that within exile rests a path towards a different kind of return. One that leads us back to ourselves. Hisham 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 * Matar writes beautifully . . . He is a nuanced observer with a gift for conveying both absurdity and raw emotion * Guardian on In the Country of Men * Matar is beginning to do for the Arab experience what the likes of Salman Rushdie have done for the sub-continent -- Sathnam Sanghera on In The Country of Men * The Times * Beautifully written . . . a graceful guide through Libya's recent history * Barack Obama on The Return * 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 *