Hisham matar biography examples
•
Hisham Matar’s first novel had huge political resonance in Libya, but both that and his recent second work are personal, human tales at heart, he tells Sophie McBain
‘I DIDN’T SIT down and think, “I want to write a political book that would inspire, that would expose the nature of life beneath the Gaddafi regime.” That wasn’t my intention at all. In fact, if I could have, inom would have avoided it, because it created a great deal of anxiety for me and for lots of people inom know,’ Hisham Matar insists.
It is a surprising admission, because his first novel, In the Country of Men, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in , did precisely that. At a time when Muammar Gaddafi had successfully painted han själv as the ultimate nuclear-bad-guy-turned-good, when Saif al Islam Gaddafi was studiously learning the language of democracy (or possibly paying others to do it for him) at LSE, and when regime strongmen were putting away their army uniforms and donning their best business suits, Ma
•
Writing with the Horror
In November&#; , a few days after Donald Trump won the presidential election, I flew to Arkansas to give a reading at the Fayetteville Public Library. I landed just before sunset. The earth was the colour of rust, the trees fiery with the end of autumn and the cattle, which grazed with seemingly no movement at all, were black. I didn’t know anyone there. A Libyan friend had written to say that there was a Syrian poet who taught at the University of Arkansas. But I couldn’t remember her name, and the email he sent me seemed to have vanished.
On the drive from the airport to my hotel we passed ranches. Even after centuries, much of American architecture, with its hurried certainties, still looks temporary. Each farm was separated by long stretches of nothing. I thought about the disgraced Austrian seaman, a minor character who appears briefly in Lord Jim. He loses his temper and, spitting and huffing, cries out in broken English: ‘I vil
•
Hisham Matar longlist author interview
Hisham Matar tells us what triggered the writing of The Return was a trip he made back to Libya after 33 years of not being able to go there and that he thinks in books rather than authors.
This is part of our series of longlisted author interviews.
What does it feel like to be longlisted?
I am amazed by how books, these creatures that arise from the depths, through silence and solitude, and that can neither be suppressed nor hurried, leave the men and women who write them and chart, as though independently, paths to individual readers. That this ever happens, that books are written and read at all, is itself a wonder. And if that book is yours and furthermore acknowledged by a prize as reputable as this, and placed amongst such excellent company, it increases the magic. But, I must say, it also adds to it an anxious humility that is, perhaps, the silent acknowledgement of the simple fact that it is impossible to ever know the true me