MY FRIENDS

457pp., paperback, Reprint, Penguin Books, London, (2024) 2025

ISBN: 9780241987032

Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize.

The novel follows the lives of three Libyan friends living as exiles in London, from the 1980s to the 2011 Arab Spring. A profound meditation on what friendship means and a moving exploration of the impact of exile.

“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 type of return. One that leads us back to ourselves. Hisham Matar is one of our greatest writers. How lucky we are to be in his midst.” Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King

"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

Hisham Matar was born in New York to Libyan parents, spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo and has lived most of his life in London. His memoir The Return received a Pulitzer Prize in 2017. He is also the author of In the Country of Men, Anatomy of a Disappearance and A Month in Siena. His work has been translated into over thirty languages.