British-Libya writer whose work explores themes such as exile, loss, and identity. He grew up in Tripoli and Cairo and currently resides in London. His first novel, In the Country of Men (2006), was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, and his memoir The Return (2016), which recounts the search for his father who disappeared during Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography in 2017. In 2024, he published My Friends, a novel following three Libyan friends in London from the 1980s to the Arab Spring in 2011. The book was nominated for the 2024 Booker Prize and won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2025. In Portugal, it was published by Relógio d’Água. At LEFFEST, he is invited to participate in the thematic cycle Exiles.
Hisham Matar
Writer
