Book review: 'My Friends' by Hisham Matar | In the country of friendship

My Friends is Pulitzer-winning British Libyan author Hisham Matar's fifth book. (Photos via X and Wikimedia Commons)

The shadow of an autocratic regime falls over much of Hisham Matar’s work, and his new novel, My Friends, is no exception. This thought-provoking book was born, as the British-Libyan author puts it, from a scribble on the back of an envelope in which he mused about “friends in exile and the emotional country that certain deep friendships can come to resemble”.

The first words of My Friends sound the keynote of what is to follow. “It is, of course, impossible to be certain of what is contained in anyone’s chest,” we read, “least of all one’s own or those we know well, perhaps especially those we know best”. This sets the stage for an exploration of the ambiguities of relationships and self-knowledge.

The novel begins at the end and unspools back to the beginning. It is broadly structured around a circuitous stroll that Khaled, the narrator, takes from London’s St Pancras Station to his home in Shepherd’s Bush, during which he is beset by memories, dreams, and reflections. On this November evening in 2016, Khaled has just bid goodbye to his old friend Hosam, who has decided to emigrate to America with his wife and daughter. The other friend on his mind is Mustafa, who has become the leader of a Libyan militia.

Decades ago, Khaled and Mustafa left Libya to study at the University of Edinburgh, where they formed a close bond; years later, they befriended the enigmatic Hosam, whom Mustafa once describes as “a writer who does not write”. Before long, the three are caught up in the bloody anti-Gaddafi protests outside the Libyan Embassy in 1984, during which a police officer was tragically shot and killed, and several others injured. They cannot now return to their country, and their new status as political exiles begins with constant vigilance, guarded smiles, and silenced opinions.

Muammar Gaddafi in 1970. (Photo by Stevan Kragujević [po odobrenju kćerke Tanje Kragujević] via Wikimedia Commons 3.0)My Friends winds its way through the years, tracking bonds and charting changes in supple, meditative sentences. The three friends pursue diverse occupations: Khaled works as an English schoolteacher, Mustafa as a real-estate agent, and Hosam travels across Europe, taking up small jobs ranging from hotel receptionist to literary reviewer. They argue, fall in and out of love, crystallise political attitudes, and for a while, Khalid believes that his companions represent “two separate and irreconcilable parts of my life that I had somehow to keep in balance”.

Some of the most moving passages involve Khaled’s relationship with his father as well as other members of his family. Beneath all this is an Oedipal undercurrent, be it the urge to overcome paternal authority or defy a patriarchal leader. In different ways, this is the yoke that each of the three friends have to deal with.

The novel braids nostalgia for a lost homeland with the allure of a new one. The sights, sounds and smells of Libya — described as “a broken vase on the shores of the southern Mediterranean” — are poignantly evoked, and the narrative also dwells on London’s shifting landscapes, which Khaled comes to embrace. He remarks that London thinks in certainties, yet it is also “a city made for shadows, for people like me who can be here a lifetime yet remain as invisible as ghosts”.

The same intertwining is present in a range of literary references which situate the novel in a wider web of writing on exile, rebellion and displacement. At one point, for example, Khaled and Mustafa attend a lecture by V.S. Naipaul (who goes on about “the evils of Muslims”) which can be an arch allusion to The Mimic Men, the latter’s own novel about political émigrés in London.

Other literary figures are frequently mentioned, from Joseph Conrad to R.L. Stephenson, from Abu al Ala al Ma’arri to Tayeb Salih, with Khaled musing on their works and the lessons they can impart in the course of his life. The novel seamlessly incorporates diverse textual forms, too: there are short stories, text messages, and letters sent and read at pivotal moments by the characters.

It is a rich selection of ingredients, then, blended with impressive skill and pacing to create a literary feast both engrossing and haunting. “We ask of writers what we ask of our closest friends,” Khaled thinks, “to help us mediate and interpret the world”. With My Friends, Matar admirably fulfils this expectation.