Hisham Matar

From Man Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Hisham Matar, a memoir of his journey home to his native Libya in search of answers to his father's disappearance. In 2012, after the overthrow of Qaddafi, the acclaimed novelist Hisham Matar journeys to his native Libya after an absence of thirty years. When he was twelve, Matar and his family went into political exile. Eight years later Matar's father, a former diplomat and military man turned brave political dissident, was kidnapped from the streets of Cairo by the Libyan government and is believed to have been held in the regime's most notorious prison. Now, the prisons are empty and little hope remains that Jaballa Matar will be found alive. Yet, as the author writes, hope is "persistent and cunning." This book is a profoundly moving family memoir, a brilliant and affecting portrait of a country and a people on the cusp of immense change, and a disturbing and timeless depiction of the monstrous nature of absolute power.

Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between

The Return

jiaqi kang

so well-written, a masterclass in non-fiction writing. thank you lis for lending this to me!

Andrew Marti

Matar writes about loss. The loss of his father, and the what the questions around his loss meant for his life. Matar's father was a Libyan dissident, fighting against Muammar Gaddafi for decades, in Libya and in exile. Eventually, Matar's father was captured and spent his final years in an infamous prison, Abu Salim. This book is about the author's journey: A physical journey back to Libya, but more importantly, and journey of memory through loss, as he searches for what happened to his father in his effort to find closure.

Matar is a beautiful writer who captures the nature of loss and its long lasting impact:
"The body of my father is gone, but his place is here and occupied by something that cannot just be called memory. It is alive and current."

Joe Herrington

Tamzin

Varun Jayaraman

Soumya

Kristina

Hellboy TCR

Jacob Mishook

Alexander Lobov

Liz Prinz

Arnav Shah

The acclaimed memoir of a son's search for the truth behind his father's disappearance--one of The New York Times Book Review's ten best books of the year and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review * The Washington Post * The Guardian * Financial Times When Hisham Matar was a nineteen-year-old university student in England, his father was kidnapped. One of the Qaddafi regime's most prominent opponents in exile, he was held in a secret prison in Libya. Hisham would never see him again. But he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. "Hope," as he writes, "is cunning and persistent." Twenty-two years later, after the fall of Qaddafi, the prison cells are empty and there is no sign of Jaballa Matar. Hisham returns with his mother and wife to the homeland he never thought he'd go back to again. The Return is the story of what he found there. It is at once an exquisite meditation on history, politics, and art, a brilliant portrait of a nation and a people on the cusp of change, and a disquieting depiction of the brutal legacy of absolute power. Above all, it is a universal tale of loss and love and of one family's life. Hisham Matar asks the harrowing question: How does one go on living in the face of a loved one's uncertain fate? Praise for The Return "[Matar] writes with both a novelist's eye for physical and emotional detail, and a reporter's tactile sense of place and time. . . . The Return is, at once, a suspenseful detective story about a writer investigating his father's fate at the hands of a brutal dictatorship, and a son's efforts to come to terms with his father's ghost, who has haunted more than half his life by his absence."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "It seems unfair to call Hisham Matar's extraordinary new book a memoir, since it is so many other things besides: a reflection on exile and the consolations of art, an analysis of authoritarianism, a family history, a portrait of a country in the throes of a revolution, and an impassioned work of mourning. . . . For all its terrible human drama . . . the most impressive thing about The Return is that it also tells a common story, the story of sons everywhere who have lost their fathers, as all sons eventually must."--Robyn Creswell, The New York Times Book Review "A moving, unflinching memoir of a family torn apart by the savage realities of today's Middle East. The crushing of hopes raised by the Arab spring--at both the personal and national levels--is conveyed all the more powerfully because Matar's anger remains controlled, his belief in humanity undimmed."--Kazuo Ishiguro, "The Best Summer Books," The Guardian "Few trips could be as emotionally freighted as the one taken by Libyan-raised novelist Hisham Matar in his thriller-like memoir . . . about the post-Qaddafi search for his dissident father--and his own deeply ambivalent sense of homecoming."--Vogue "A triumph of art over tyranny, structurally thrilling, intensely moving, The Return is a treasure for the ages."--Peter Carey "Tremendously powerful . . . Although it filled me with rage again and again, I never lost sight of Matar's beautiful intelligence as he tried to get to the heart of the mystery."--Nadeem Aslam

The Return Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between

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