An intensely moving novel about three friends living in political exile and the emotional homeland that deep friendships can provide - from the Booker-shortlisted, 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.

'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


'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. MY FRIENDS is a breathtaking novel, every page a miracle and an affirmation. Hisham is one of our greatest writers, how lucky we are to be in his midst.' MAAZA MENGISTE, author of THE SHADOW KING

Our Booksellers Say...

"What a start to the literary year! Exquisite writing, propelled by pitch-perfect pacing, which is key when dealing with subject matters as complex as political revolutions, cultural displacement and belonging, and – most tellingly – the relationships we strike up along the way.

This, then, is a profound contemplation about when life has become so terribly complicated – unimaginably so in Khaled's case, having been exiled as a subject of the Qaddafi regime – one can find ringing clarity about one's own state by examining how we may see ourselves in how we engage with those around us.

Never despondent, always warm – even when the chips are truly down – I'm sorry to be leaving the pages of this fantastically wrought modern world, but like one of the characters, I will keep this book and revisit it someday so I can be amongst friends once more."

Mirjam, Blackwell's Online Bookseller

View all of Mirjam's recommendations