My Friends

Pulitzer Prize winner Hisham Matar’s third novel, My Friends, begins with a tender yet tense goodbye between two middle-aged friends, one of whom is compelled to search their past in order to understand how they got there. Decades earlier, Khaled, the book’s somber protagonist, found kinship with Hosam, an enigmatic writer and fellow Libyan dissident living in London. However, amid the Arab Spring of 2011, the 20-something pair began to drift apart. Hosam returned home to Benghazi to become a freedom fighter, unsuccessfully urging the more reluctant Khaled to do the same. After the death of Libya’s tyrant leader Muammar Gaddafi that same year, Hosam began working for the government, only to find himself, 10 years later, once again forced to flee his homeland. In Matar’s novel about friendship, repression, and exile, Hosam’s sudden move forces Khaled on a painful journey down memory lane.

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