My Friends

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024
WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION

An intensely moving novel about three friends living in political exile and the emotional homeland that deep friendships can provide - from the Pulitzer prize-winning author of THE RETURN.

Khaled and Mustafa meet at university in Edinburgh: two Libyan eighteen-year-olds expecting to return home after their studies. In a moment of recklessness and courage, they travel to London to join a demonstration in front of the Libyan embassy. When government officials open fire on protestors in broad daylight, both friends are wounded, and their lives forever changed.

Over the years that follow, Khaled, Mustafa and their friend Hosam, a writer, are bound together by their shared history. If friendship is a space to inhabit, theirs becomes small and inhospitable when a revolution in Libya forces them to choose between the lives they have created in London and the lives they left behind.

'The first Booker contender of 2024 . . . a deeply touching, beautifully composed book' Sunday Times

'It makes clear, once more, that Hisham Matar is a supremely talented novelist.' COLM TOIBIN

'I have always admired Matar's tender and compassionate but equally strong and compelling voice' ELIF SHAFAK

'It is impossible to describe the profound depth and beauty of this book' MAAZA MENGISTE, author of THE SHADOW KING

'My Friends is both a complex and unsentimental meditation on what friendship means and a searingly moving exploration of how exile impacts those who are forced to live in this state of loss. It is a book that we loved for its spareness of language and its deeply affecting storytelling.’ Booker Prize Judges 2024


Genre: Literary Fiction

"My Friends is quite possibly Hisham Matar's best work yet, and that's saying something. A quiet detonation of a novel, this masterful inquiry into the nature of friendship, exile and place is not so much to be read as lived through. The depth of thought, the unflinchingly honest confrontation with loss and longing, is there on every page, in every moment. Very few writers alive can converse with negative space the way Matar does, and My Friends is stunning, beautiful proof." - Omar El Akkad

"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 toward a different kind 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

"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

"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

"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