Hisham Matar

Hisham Matar (هشام مطر) (born 1970) is an American born British-Libyan writer. His memoir of the search for his father, The Return, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and the 2017 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. His debut novel In the Country of Men was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. Matar's essays have appeared in the Asharq al-Awsat, The Independent, The Guardian, The Times and The New York Times. His second novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance, was published to wide acclaim on 3 March 2011. He lives and writes in London.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and Associate Professor of Professional Practice in Comparative Literature, Asia & Middle East Cultures, and English at Barnard College, Columbia University.

Early life
Hisham Matar was born in New York City, in 1970, the second of two sons. His father, Jaballa Matar, who was considered a political dissident for his opinions on Colonel Muammar Qaddafi's coup in 1969, had to move the family away from Tripoli and was working for the Libyan delegation to the United Nations, in New York, at the time of Matar's birth.

The family moved back to Tripoli, Libya, in 1973, but fled the country again in 1979. Matar was nine when they moved to Cairo, where the family lived in exile, and where Matar's father became more vocal against the Gaddafi regime. Matar continued his schooling at Cairo's American school.

In 1982, Matar's brother Ziad left for boarding school in the Swiss Alps. Though Matar desperately wanted to join his brother, he had to wait four more years until he too was sixteen. Because of the continued threats by the Libyan dictatorship against their father (as well as a threat to Ziad's safety while he was studying in Switzerland), however, he could not follow his brother to Switzerland. Both boys had to attend the schools under a false identity. Matar chose a school in England and enrolled in 1986. "'I was to pretend that my mother was Egyptian and my father American. It was thought that this would explain, to any Arabs in the school, why my Arabic was Egyptian and why my English was American. My first name was Bob. Ziad chose it because both he and I were fans of Bob Marley and Bob Dylan. I was to pretend I was Christian, though not religious. I was to try to forget my name. If someone called Hisham, I was not to turn.' — Hisham Matar, 2011."By the time Matar finished his studies, Ziad was a university student in London. Matar decided to pursue his studies in architecture, and later received an MA in Design Futures at Goldsmiths, University of London.

In 1990, while he was still studying in London, his father, Jaballa Matar, was abducted in Cairo. He has been reported missing ever since. In 1996, the family received two letters in his father's handwriting stating that he had been kidnapped by the Egyptian secret police, handed over to the Libyan regime, and imprisoned in the notorious Abu Salim prison in the heart of Tripoli. The letters were the last sign and only thing they had heard from him or about his whereabouts. In 2009, Matar reported that he had received news that his father had been seen alive in 2002, indicating that Jaballa had survived a 1996 massacre of 1200 political prisoners by the Libyan authorities.

"'In March 1990, Egyptian secret service agents abducted my father from his home in Cairo. For the first two years they led us to believe that he was being held in Egypt, and told us to keep quiet or else they could not guarantee his safety. In 1992 my father managed to smuggle out a letter. A few months later my mother held it in her hand. His careful handwriting curled tightly on to itself to fit as many words as possible on the single A4 sheet of paper. Words with hardly a space between, above or beneath them. No margins, they run to the brink.' —Hisham Matar, 2010."

Works
Hisham Matar has written three novels, two memoirs, and a children's book published in Italian, Il Libro di Dot. He has also written several articles, essays and short stories that have been published on various websites.

In the Country of Men
Matar began writing his first novel, In the Country of Men, in early 2000. In the autumn of 2005, the publishers Penguin International signed him to a two-book deal. In the Country of Men was published in July 2006 and has been translated into 30 languages. ISBN 0-670-91639-0

Anatomy of a Disappearance
Matar's second novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance, contains a character whose father is taken away by the authorities; while Matar acknowledges the relation to his own father's disappearance, he has stated that the novel is not autobiographical. ISBN 0-670-91651-X

The Return
In 2016, Matar published his memoir The Return. The memoir centers on Matar's return to his native Libya in 2012 to search for the truth behind the 1990 disappearance of his father, a prominent political dissident of the Gaddafi regime. ISBN 0-670-92333-8

Il Libro di Dot
Il Libro di Dot is a children's book released by Matar in 2017. It is his first children's book and was illustrated by Gianluca Buttolo. ISBN 978-8865671924

A Month in Siena
On October 17, 2019, Matar published A Month in Siena. The short book is an affectionate and reflective record of his most recent stay in Siena, Italy and his encounters there with Sienese School artworks. ISBN 9780593129135

My Friends
His novel, My Friends, was published in 2024 by Random House in the United States and Viking in the United Kingdom.

Essays

 * "The Light", The New Yorker, September 12, 2011.
 * "Naima", The New Yorker, January 24, 2011.
 * "The Return: A Father's Disappearance, A Journey Home", The New Yorker, April 8, 2013.
 * "The Unsaid: The Silence of Virginia Woolf", The New Yorker, November 10, 2014.
 * "The Book", The New Yorker, November 10, 2014.
 * I don't remember a time when words were not dangerous, The Guardian, June 25, 2016.
 * "What Your Eyes See", The Financial Times Magazine, October 21, 2016.
 * "Orphaned Solemnity", The Times Literary Supplement, September 28, 2016.
 * "Diary", London Review of Books, 18 May 2017.
 * "A Journalist Abroad Grapples With American Power", The New York Times Book Review, August 28, 2017.

Style
Matar has explored themes of loss and exile in his first two novels, as well as in his memoir, The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between. Matar's writing often borrows from and refers to painting, architecture, and music. Though he has said he cannot remember a time when he wasn't writing, Matar first turned to his interests in music—"And because I had no talent in music," he has said, "I became an architect, and I continued writing. Writing seemed like just the thing you keep doing—like breathing, or walking, or eating."

Hisham Matar on his writing process:

"I start with very little: the more fragile, the better. The thread has to feel like it is about to snap. Sometimes I begin with a gesture or, in the case of 'Naima,' a feeling for a character. I had this feeling for Nuri, the protagonist and narrator. It is like that moment when you rush into the concert hall at the last minute. You find your seat as the lights go down. You have not seen the person sitting beside you, but you have a sense of them, of what they might be like, or of how the music is affecting them, the weight of their silence."

Awards and honours

 * 2024: Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, winner for My Friends
 * 2017: Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for The Return
 * 2017: PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for The Return
 * 2017: Rathbones Folio Prize for The Return
 * 2017: National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, Finalist for The Return
 * 2017: Premio Libro Del Año, Gremio de Libreros de Madrid for The Return
 * 2017: Geschwister-Scholl-Preis for The Return
 * 2017: Prix du livre étranger (France) for The Return
 * 2016: The Baillie Gifford Prize, shortlist for The Return
 * 2016: Costa Biography Award, shortlist for The Return
 * 2016: The Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize for The Return
 * 2016: Los Angeles Times – Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, finalist for The Return
 * 2016: The Return cited as one of The New York Times’ “Top 10 Books of 2016”
 * 2013: International Dublin Literary Award longlist for Anatomy of a Disappearance
 * 2013: Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
 * 2012: Arab American Book Award shortlist for Anatomy of a Disappearance
 * 2012: "Naima", included in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories collection of short stories
 * 2011: RSL Encore Award Shortlist for Anatomy of a Disappearance
 * 2011: Anatomy of a Disappearance named one of the best books of the year by The Chicago Tribune, The Daily Beast, The Independent, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Toronto Sun, Irish Times
 * 2008: Mary Amelia Cummins Harvey Visiting Fellow Commoner at Girton College, University of Cambridge.
 * 2008: National Book Critics Circle Awards Nominee for In the Country of Men
 * 2007: Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize for In the Country of Men
 * 2007: Commonwealth Writers' Prize of Europe and South Asia for In the Country of Men
 * 2007: Library Journal Best Books of the Year for In the Country of Men
 * 2007: Arab American Book Award for In the Country of Men
 * 2007: In the Country of Men named one of The New York Times "100 Notable Books of the Year"
 * 2007: Premio Gregor von Rezzori for foreign fiction translated into Italian for In the Country of Men
 * 2007: Premio Internazionale Flaiano (Sezione Letteratura) for In the Country of Men
 * 2006: Man Booker Prize, shortlist for In the Country of Men
 * 2006: Guardian First Book Award for In the Country of Men