What happens when a young man leaves his home in Libya to study in England and suddenly finds he cannot go home—maybe ever. This is a very introspective study of one such person, how he manages to build a life for himself, survives his mistakes, struggles with the secrets he must keep, and examines his own motivations in Libya’s struggle for freedom. The characters are so very likable and inhabit the very real world of Libya’s dictatorship and unrest that it reads like a nonfiction account. A very thought provoking story and one that will linger in memory.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the ARC to read and review.

The new year of books will get off to a thought-provoking start with the early January release of Pulitzer Prize winning writer Hisham Matar’s My Friends, a captivating novel that will entertain while educating readers about the Qaddafi regime in Libya. In a sense, this is an historical novel, but, more importantly, Matar shows history’s effects on humanity.

From sentence one, Matar lets readers into Khaled’s mind, and a rather confused mind it is as Khaled watches long-time friend Hosam Zowa walk away across the concourse at King’s Cross Station, preparing to board a train for Paris and then join his wife and daughter in Northern California. If the opening short chapters seem more introspective and confusing than you prefer, making you feel you need to know more to understand Khaled’s thoughts, don’t worry. The pace with soon pick up and the picture become clearer. Before long, I had difficulty setting the book down. Three chapters (only a few pages) before the end, I purposefully set it down overnight because I didn’t want it to end so soon.

Tempted to follow Hosam Zowa to Paris, Khaled instead decides to make the long walk home to Shepherd’s Bush, the London neighborhood where he has lived in a small flat since shortly after his arrival in London in 1984. It is now Friday evening, November 18, 2016, and 50-year-old Khaled is about to relive his life while passing places that spark vivid, sometimes heart-breaking, memories. Whether recalling March 1980 when legendary BBC Arabic World Service journalist Mohammad Mustafa Ramadan surprised 14-year-old Khaled and his family by reading a short story by the unknown writer Hosam Zowa rather than reporting the news, the way Zowa’s story led 18-year-old Khaled to Edinburgh to study four years later, his life-changing trip with university friend Mustafa al Touny to participate in an anti-Qaddafi demonstration in front of London’s Libyan embassy the following spring, the secrets he keeps from his parents and sister back home in Benghazi, the Qaddafi regime’s vicious crackdown on dissident journalists and other members of the intelligentsia, changes in his friendships brought about by the 2011 Libyan revolution when his friends chose to go home to fight, and any number of other events shaping him, Khaled ponders his life. Fragmented memory by fragmented memory, readers come to know Khaled as well as his friends Mustafa al Touny and Hosam Zowa, but also others such as Professor Henry Walbrook, Rana Lamesse, Hannah, and even works of literature.

“As foolish to think we are free of history as it would be of gravity,” Hosam Zowa remarks. Yet individual responses to history differ. After a long night-time walk accompanied by a lifetime of memories, Khaled finally reaches his small London flat. Exactly what readers make of Khaled Abd al Hady’s life will be up to each to decide. Matar’s brief ending seemed perfect to me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for this gem by Hisham Matar.

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I loved this book. It was an amazing story of life, love, family, friendships. I found myself coming back to this story and in the heartbreak and tragedy finding hope and connection. You will not be disappointed in this story at all. All the characters are so real I found my heart feeling for their journeys on every page. I read a NetGalley copy and will be recommending it to all.

This was a whirlwind of a story. It makes you think about what is worth fighting for and how you can love a place but not agree with its leader's views. This book will stay with you long after you put it down.

Growing up in Benghazi, Kahlid is affected by hearing a short story about a man eaten alive by a cat. He enrolls in the University of Edinburgh where he remains friends with Mustafa, also from his home town. When Mustafa convinces him to attend a political protest at the Libyan Embassy in London where violence erupts, Kahlid’s life is forever changed. The two young men can no longer return to either their home country nor to Edinburgh. Thus, Kahlid begins the life of an exile living in London.

He does have the opportunity to meet the author of the short story that had such an impact on him and they become friends. As the Arab Spring dawns and the political situation in Libya escalates, his two friends eventually choose a different path from him, returning to their homeland to be a part of the revolution.

Khalid recounts his history while taking a walk about his adopted city, passing places of significance, including where that protest took place. The novel is based on true events in the tortuous history of Libya (and the protest in London) and the effects of this history on three fictional friends.

Beautifully written and introspective, the novel expresses the pain of living in exile away from family and the countryside one loved as a child, as well as the constant fear experienced by political exiles. It was a bit of a slow read for me as Khalid’s musings do tend to meander and I wanted to reflect on every one of his thoughts and experiences.

This novel reads like a memoir and the reader experiences the lonely life of living in political exile. The story takes place during the reign of Gaddafi in Lybia. Three young men build a friendship while living in London. They share the same homeland, a love of literature and their experiences forms an unusually strong bond.
This is a book about family, loss and friendship.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC

My Friends, by Hisham Matar.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for and advance reader’s copy of this book.

In present-day London, as Khaled abd al Hady takes a circuitous, long walk home from what may be a final farewell to his best friend, he visits the sites that define his life as a long-time exile in London. Like his walk, his mind circles around the events and people that have brought him to middle-age.

Relentlessly self-analyzing, this fictional character inhabits the persona of one of the 11 real Libyan protesters against their country’s dictatorship, shot by their own government from their London embassy in April 1984. Occurring deep in Qaddafi’s regime, this changes the trajectory of Khaled’s life. Now marked as a dissident, he cannot return home, continue with his British education (allowed and funded by the Libyan government), or even explain himself to his parents, for fear they may be implicated and suffer because of his actions.

Through the course of the book, and the more than 30 years that follow the protest, Khaled is preoccupied with his two closest Libyan friends, also in exile, questioning their motives and decisions, and especially, his own. He speaks of great affection and loyalty, coupled with absence and suspicion, of intense connections and unfathomable silence. He sometimes sees these friends as representing the separate and irreconcilable parts of his own life, as he seeks a balance between action and intellectual understanding, but takes little action, and endlessly analyzes motives and relationships.

This book may be powerful and thought-provoking, even profound, but it is not enjoyable. Too much time is spent in the middle-aged, displaced narrator’s mind and memories, as he recalls his long exile from his Libyan home. The brighter parts of his life – his dedicated and respected teaching career, his long-time loving relationship with an Englishwoman, his early life in a loving and supportive family – seem incidental, as he ponders the major turning point in his youth, when almost casual actions upended his life.

There are tantalizing themes that are touched on - for example, the challenge of translating work and experiences between languages - but ultimately this story of displacement and despair seems too specific and myopic to generalize beyond its narrator’s obsessive and depressive recollections.

Thank you Net Galley and Random House for the ARC copy of this book.

I really enjoyed this book. I learned a bit about Libya and some of their conflicts. It was so sad to see how the life of Khaled, living in exile, was formed based on one decision he made as a young man. It showed the value of true friends in one’s life, especially for someone who is unable to return home to family and the life they once knew. This was a well written book with a unique storyline.

I was mesmerized by this novel from the first sentences describing the parting of friends of twenty years.

It was a short story by Hosam that opened Khaled to the power of words and inspired him to study English Literature. Walking home from the station after seeing Hosam off, Khaled muses on the arc of his life and his relationship with pivotal friends.

Khaled won a scholarship to study English Literature at Edinburgh, where he met Mustafa, also from Benghazi. They attended an anti-Qaddafi protest and were shot. Now marked men, hiding from spies, Khalid couldn’t tell his family what happened and why he couldn’t return home.

Khaled remembers the Edinburgh professor who befriended him; Rana, the Lebanese woman to whom he first he shared his secret and who later in life trusted him to keep hers; Claire, the English woman he loved and lost. He remembers the writers who shaped him; Hosam, recalling their early, deep friendship forged when they met in Paris, and Robert Louis Stevenson whose “ease of his sentences, which have the honest and vital momentum of nature” they both admired.

During the Arab Spring, Khaled watched Mustafa and Hosam return to Libya join the fight against Qaddafi, both changed forever by the experience. But he could not leave the life he had made in England, knowing if he returned to Libya he would be a man without a country.

With its themes of friendship, family, exile, literature, and love, this gorgeous and moving novel is one of my favorite 2023 reads.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.

Loved the book overall and felt like I learned a lot about recent history. I didn't fully understand the relationship dynamics between the three main male characters. The interactions moved from idol to mentor to friend and moved back and forth among those dynamics, and perhaps that is the point, that relationships and positions of power change over time, but it was a little perplexing for me as a reader, I cared about the characters, worried for them, felt drawn into the book. Great writing.

A moving book full of complicated relationships, friendships, and history. It is well-written but took me a while to get through, a bit slow at points. Interesting story about a man in exile.

3.5 stars. An interesting coming-of-age story, focusing on Khaled from Benghazi, who goes to study abroad in Edinburgh. He takes part in a demonstration against Qaddafi and as a consequence, he seeks asylum in England and thus far removed from his family and friends. While I got somewhat bogged down with the storytelling at points, the novel is beautifully written (although it took me a bit to get used to the author’s writing style) and empathetically portrays this period of Libyan history and how the then current affairs affected Khaled and two of his friends (Mustafa and Hosam) basically exiled away from home.

Beautifully written story about friendship, exile and finding yourself in the world. This new novel by Pulitzer Prize winning author Hisham Matar is about a singular character, a man named Khaled; but the story encompasses the conflicts in Libya, the fear of those living under the dictatorship and of the need for people everywhere to find their place in the world. Khaled is only 14 when sitting with his family in his home in Benghazi a respected journalist decides to read a short story over the radio instead of the news. The short story is about a man who is being eaten by his pet cat and the story stayed with Khaled for many years until he befriended the author himself.

At age 18, Khaled went away to Edinburgh for college and met his friend Mustafa. While he loved the world of books and learning, he missed his family and felt watched by the students who were paid to keep tabs on their fellow Libyans. When Mustafa talks Khaled into attending a political rally at the Libya embassy, both men are badly wounded with Khaled almost losing his life. From that point on, Khaled feels lost, he cannot return home and he cannot return to his university. Instead he makes his life in London, one friend at a time ,one decision at a time. Khaled reflects on his life when at age 50, he sees his friend and the author of the short story, Hosam off at the train station. I found Khaled's life often sad and lonely, but also hopeful. He found a family of friends to care for him when he could not return to his own family and he allowed himself to be content with what he had. For me, the story ended on a hopeful note and I was glad to have met Khaled and heard his story. Thank You to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this story in exchange for a review.

This story brings realism to the life of Khaled and his two close friends, Mustafa and Hosam, who participated in the revolution against Qaddafi’s empire in Libya.

It starts when Khaled was a young boy inspired by a story he heard on the radio about a cat that ate parts of a man – piece by piece. The only thing left was his head and torso which sounded like a bad dream to me. This man wasn’t able to fight back. Hosam also wrote a book which Khaled referred to several times. It was banned in almost all the Arab countries. Later by coincidence, Khaled met the author, Hosam, and they became instant friends.

Khaled was taking classes at the University of Edinburgh where he met Mustafa, also from Libya. They decided to participate in a protest in London against Qaddafi and were sent to the hospital after getting shot. Both healed along with a few others under tight security. This changed the course of their lives.

So many of us know very little about the history of Libya. I read this story slowly as there was much to digest. Khaled and his family and friends suffered from the emotional pain of what was happening in their country with the kidnappings, assassinations and too much blood on the streets. It gave me a grim look of what can happen when a country has a revolution and dictator in control. “How do you escape the demands of unreasonable men?”

The book is certainly thought provoking in many ways. The author’s strength is telling stories of the people. It almost felt like a memoir by Khaled with all the joys and deep concerns of life. He wrote about their families, love relationships, and struggles with the civil war. The characters: Khaled, Mustafa and Hosam were very believable in my mind with the strong bonds between them.

My thanks to Random House and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book with an expected release date of January 9, 2024.

This novel is a fictional memoir, a lyrically written character study of a Libyan exile living in London. Right away, I was very impressed by Hisham Matar’s writing and so I was not surprised to discover that his previous work has won a Pulitzer. I knew very little about Libya before starting this book and I would recommend it to anyone interested in learning more. I found myself looking up its history in order to better understand the events, becoming more and more appalled by being reminded of the evil that undemocratic regimes do in order to keep power. I don’t enjoy character studies so after about 30% I felt that it just wasn’t for me; the subject matter was also too dark for me to handle right now. If you enjoy beautifully written character studies, if you are interested in learning more about Libya, and if you want to know more about the life of an exile, then definitely give this book a try.

Wow! A very impressive and in depth story about family, exile and the pressures and perils of life. It’s always insightful to learn about how people live and work in different parts of the world, in this case, Libya.

Wasn't for me. Nothing wrong with it per se. It is a perfectly fine book that has an interesting plot and interesting characters. I just couldn't get into it. It didn't speak to me, it didn't move me. It very extraordinarily flat to me. I found it to be a bit cliche and at times too overly emotional. In a certain sense it seemed kind of stereotypical. I also just think that there are too many other books out there of its same ilk that I think do a better job for me to have a better opinion of it.

My Friends is a beautifully moving book about family, friendship and the effect of war and conflict on all aspects of someone's life. The story revolves around Khaled, who as a young man decides to leave Libya to study at the University of Edinburgh. Very shortly after arriving a friend persuades him to attend a rally in London. In an instant Khaled's life is permanently altered and he finds himself in exile in the UK.
As Khaled struggles with where to make his home, and how to find himself many others come into his life offering varying degrees of love, support, advice and friendship. It is through these relationships that Khaled learns who he is and what is important to him.
The prose is beautiful, almost poetic in its straightforward nature. The book definitely covers some tough subjects and can be difficult at times, but it in the end it is a survival story. A survival story that reminds us that to survive we need people on our side and in our corner. Khaled uses his friends to find his true self and live authentically. You will be better for having read this book.

A lovely and devastating novel of love and loss, pain and attachment, from a master craftsman. This aching tale of emigration, family, politics and literature perhaps starts a little dryly but soon finds its feet, telling of Khalid’s physical wounding in the Libyan Embassy shooting incident in London and the exile that event delivers. Seeking home and connection, he finds much in the friendship of two friends, long relationships which embrace translation, meditation, war and eventual peace. This novel is often abstract, but always lyrical, offering, in its sensitivity, much of the nature of apartness and reconciliation. Very impressive.

My Friends, by Hisham Matar, is a thoughtful, deeply personal character study illuminating the inner life of an exiled Libyan man living in London. The book is fictional, although it reads like a memoir, and is based on historical events. The writing is exquisite, with the author masterfully revealing what it means to live a life in exile, poignantly describing the resilience necessary to exchange the comfort of a life in the arms of family, homeland, and history for a future filled with uncertainty, loss, and a constant fear of betrayal.

I found the first third of the book compelling, reading compulsively to learn what would befall young Khaled and his friend Mustafa, forcing them into exile in London. The pace of the book slowed dramatically for the remaining two-thirds, however. Perhaps this was intentional on the author’s part, as Khaled experienced the emotional struggles of settling into a life in exile for the long term.

While the book isn’t directly about the politics of Libya and the Arab Spring revolution, some basic knowledge would be helpful for readers. I didn’t have the requisite background knowledge, so I spent some time Googling to “catch up.”

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on January 9 2024.