My Friends (2024)
Why this one?
This is another 2024 Booker Longlist selection. This is certainly one of the books I’ve seen the most positive commentary around, both since the longlist announcement and before. The subject matter sounded up my street, too.
Hisham Matar (1970- ; active 2005- ) was born in New York City, to Libyan parents. His father was considered a political dissident for his opinions on Qaddafi's 1969 coup. The family moved back to Libya in 1973 but fled again to Cairo in 1979. He moved to England to go to school in 1986, where he had to live unde a false name (Bob) and pretend to be Egyptian rather than Libyan. He went on to study architecture at Goldsmiths in London, during which time his father was abducted in Cairo, and has been officially considered 'missing' ever since.
He began writing in the early 2000s and published his first novel, In the Country of Men, in 2005. It was shortlisted for the 2006 Booker, losing out to Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss, as well as appearing on numerous other award shortlists and books of the year rankings. His second novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance, appeared in 2011, and he has since published two works of non-fiction including the 2016 memoir (focusing heavily on his father) The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land In Between, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and a children's book (Il Libro di Dot, 2017). My Friends (2024) is his third novel.
Thoughts, etc.
In the novel, both Khaled and Mustafa are shot at the protest and hospitalised. From this point, they are unable to return to their home country. The book explores the subsequent relationship, and eventual diverging paths, of the two friends, along with a third, the enigmatic author Hosam. The latter is introduced early in the novel as an inspirational figure in Khaled's life, after hearing his poem read out - unusually in lieu of a news broadcast - on the BBC Arabic World Service, by a presenter who would soon after be murdered in London (another event based closely on real events). Khaled later meets Hosam by chance in Paris, before the writer (no longer writing) joins him in London and becomes a lasting friend.
The novel is structured, with a very light touch, around a present-day walk through London in which Khaled, shortly after bidding Hosam (about to move to the US) a farewell at St Pancras station, walks back to the small Shepherd's Bush flat he has made his home for decades, passing on the way through locations that hold varying degrees of significance for him (most notably St James's Square, the site of the 1984 protest). This lends the book a deliberatively reflective, nostalgic tone, in which Khaled reflects on the choices he has made, particularly relative to those of his two principle friends.
Without wanting to give too much away, the pivotal moment in their divergence is the 2011 Arab Spring, of course in particular its bearing on Libya. As events spiral in the friends' homeland, their freedom to return home gradually returns, and with political events in Libya far from immediately settled, there are active roles available for men of their age and potential influence in the ongoing conflict and its drawn-out aftermath. By this point, though, Khaled has reconciled himself to a life of exile, and built a satisfactorily fulfilling life in London as a teacher, which he is loathe to abandon.
The interplay and differences between those three characters, both in those later years and in the build up to them, is one of many highlights of the book. While all three are intelligent and well-read, there are crucial differences. Mustafa is evidently the man of action, capable of participating in intellectual discussion of art but fast to abandon them as soon as their 'usefulness' passes. Hosam, as the published author, is ostensibly the most committed to the arts but abandons his writing early on and is attached only to a handful of works to which he clings passionately. Unlike Mustafa, he struggles to find purpose outside of his writing though, at least until after the events of 2011. Khaled is the one of the three who seems able to find genuine fulfillment in his literary obsessions, almost to the exclusion of everything else.
The one exception is friendship, which is not referenced in the book's title for nothing. In exile, friendship has kept Khaled going, and he is therefore more sensitive to moments at which that friendship is tested. While his other friends occasionally seem to have other passionate priorities (whether temporary ones like Mustafa's pursuit of women and money, or more intensely held 'callings' especially following 2011), for Khaled such strongly held passions and certainties are less readily accessed. Matar, like Khaled himself, does not come to any firm conclusions about what is the 'best' way to have lived a life. He observes the choices made that have made life feel liveable, and at least somewhat purposeful, for Khaled, but at the same time is reflective about both the life he has lost in exile and the possibility that he has let others down in making what seem to have been the correct choices for himself.
Ultimately it's a beautiful book, written in an understated but hugely perceptive mode that makes for a really lush, immersive reading experience. It covers moments of great political and global significance with a detached yet insightful eye, deeply aware of their impact on all parties but never feeling didactic or attached to easy certainties. Like Khaled, it takes solace in parts of life (art, friendship) that offer less 'solid ground' but provide the avenues through which we can at least attempt to make sense of the madness of the world (with its conflicts, borders, and brutality) and experience no little joy and wonder while doing so.
Score
9.5
One of the most purely enjoyable books I’ve read in a long time, largely due to the quality of the writing - measured and meditative, yet full of moments of insight and wonder. I think it would be an absolute crime if this didn’t at least make the shortlist, and of the books I’ve read so far, it’s the one I’d love to see win this year’s Booker.
Next up
I’m trying to squeeze in The Safe Keep before the shortlist is (imminently) announced.
