By Hisham Matar

ISBN: 9780812994858

‘My Friends’ is a story of love and longing for a home left behind and the people we meet as we try to find ‘home’ in a new place. It is as much about the Libyan diaspora as it is about the human mind and emotions that yearn for a place in the past, and struggle with reconciling it with a changed present.

Synopsis

“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.”Business has never been better for Nura Khan, a third-generation matchmaker in Atlanta. Her exclusive clientele benefits from her impeccable track record. And while a single thirty-one-year-old matchmaker would normally raise some perfectly threaded eyebrows in the community, Nura’s childhood best friend, Azar, is willing to double as her pretend fiancé at her clients’ weddings—even though Nura’s feelings for him might not be so pretend.

But all that glitters isn’t gold. While it’s not uncommon to get the occasional hate mail from rejected prospective clients, Nura is blindsided after a couple’s carefully constructed wedding implodes, the first in a cascading chain of suspicious and increasingly terrifying events. Someone is taking things too far, and with Azar and her matchmaking team by her side, Nura embarks on a dangerous cat-and-mouse game that threatens not only her safety but everything she’s worked so hard to build.See Less

What’s to like

Hisham Matar is a skilled writer. The narrative and the flow of the story are engaging. As Khaled walks home after dropping his friend to a train station, he revisits different parts of his life. Through flashbacks we learn about his journey to London from Benghazi and the path his life took from then onwards. It all is seamless and does not make one feel dizzy and confused with jumping back and forth in the events.

What perhaps stood out the most about this book is that Matar seems to be describing our innermost feelings which are not easily put into words. His portrayal of interactions among characters delves deeper into what goes on in the minds of the people behind seemingly ordinary conversations.

It is also interesting how the place, i.e. the city of London is extensively discussed throughout the book. It felt like it might have been an effort to explain how Khaled finds it becoming his home over the years.

What’s not to like

The ending is a bit flat. The book is a story about friends in exile, a sense of longing for home and eventually time changing where one’s roots get established. The arc of the characters’ life is the focus, but the ending seems like it is missing something.

Moreover, the book has short chapters, but it could do without some of those. Some parts in the middle of the story seemed to drag on and the story builds slowly. However, the excellent story telling made it all bearable.

The last thing I did not like about this book is something I come across often. My own personal desire to find storytelling by Muslim authors where the characters are not Muslims in name only. I wish to find books where I can find stories that I can relate to. Of course, this is a personal preference and something others might not care about.

Note:

Book Review Rating: 4.5/5
Content Warnings: Pre-marital relations, torture and violence. Age advisory: 18+