My Friends

Praise

“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 2024”

“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