LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2024
WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION
FROM THE PULITZER-PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR OF THE RETURN

'A brilliant novel about innocence and experience, about friendship, family and exile' COLM TOIBIN

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 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

"A deeply touching, beautifully composed book" - Sunday Times

"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 Toibin

"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

"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 kind of return. One that leads us back to ourselves. Hisham is one of our greatest writers, how lucky we are to be in his midst." - Maaza Mengiste, author of THE SHADOW KING, shortlisted for the Booker Prize

"Meditative yet propulsive – as well as structurally inventive – the narrative puts us in Khaled’s mind as he walks across his adopted city while reflecting on youth, exile and the flashpoints of Libya’s recent history" - Anthony Cummins

"Dazzling...a personal, deeply felt work...tightly structured and controlled, looping back and forth through time and memory, building on itself in a process of gradual expansion and revelation" - Toronto Star