2024 Booker Longlist: My Friends by Hisham Matar

by jenp27 on August 31, 2024

Book 8/13 for our panel is Hisham Matar’s My Friends.

Cover blurb: One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat, and has the sense that his life has been changed forever. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh.

There, thrust into an open society that is miles away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change. He attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London, only to watch it explode into tragedy. In a flash, Khaled finds himself injured, clinging to life, unable to leave Britain, much less return to the country of his birth. To even tell his mother and father back home what he has done, on tapped phone lines, would expose them to danger.

When a chance encounter in a hotel brings Khaled face-to-face with Hosam Zowa, the author of the fateful short story, he is subsumed into the deepest friendship of his life. It is a friendship that not only sustains him but eventually forces him, as the Arab Spring erupts, to confront agonizing tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his own sense of self against those closest to him.

A devastating meditation on friendship and family, and the ways in which time tests—and frays—those bonds, My Friends is an achingly beautiful work of literature by an author working at the peak of his powers.

You can purchase a copy of the book here.

Keep reading to find out how our panellists rated this book.

Jen’s Thoughts: I really enjoyed this book and am glad it made the longlist. As someone who has grown up in multiple countries (not due to exile), the concepts of home, identity, and the connections between the two are interesting to me and lead to my personal level of engagement in this novel. The exploration of how exile could impact both personal and social identity was a central theme of the book and one that was explored through the development and maintenance of friendships throughout the years. My Friends was a beautifully written exploration of friendship in exile and the impact of being uprooted and disconnected from family and culture on personal development.

Writing quality: 5/5
Originality: 4/5
Character development: 4/4
Plot development: 3/4
Overall enjoyment: 2/2
Did it deserve a spot on the longlist? Yes
Total: 18/20

Nicole’s Thoughts: I made it 20% into this book and abandoned it. Absolutely nothing grabbed me and made me want to continue on. Tracy’s review mentions “meditation” and “meandering” … both things I don’t look for in a book. I know there’s big a lot of buzz on this book, but I kind of don’t think it’s going to make the longlist. There are far more interesting books out there, even on this list.

Tracy’s Thoughts: This may be the most polarizing book on this panel, but I loved it. I didn’t love the author’s previous listing, but this one tugged at my heart, and taught me about a place and time I know next to nothing about.
I didn’t love the meandering- editing is a thing- but the writing was so beautiful that I forgave it.

Writing quality: 4/5
Originality: 4/5
Character development: 4/4
Plot development: 3/4
Overall enjoyment: 2/2
Did it deserve a spot on the longlist? Yes. A lovely meditation on friendship and history.
Total: 17/20

Anita’s Thoughts: If the title of the book was say Exile maybe I would have gone into this one with a different frame of mind. But marketing the book as a novel about friendship seemed like a stretch. The setting and concept were original, and I appreciated the spotlight on the strains of being far from home and family and the challenges of that. But, the book premise is spoiled in the first three chapters, leaving very little suspense. I didn’t really buy the friendships either; the three men were solely bound together by country and politics, and I didn’t see any depth to relationships. Maybe that’s how male friendships are, and I just don’t get it? There were three scenes, out of 108 short chapters, that grabbed me emotionally, and that’s not enough.

Writing quality: 4/5
Originality: 4/5
Character development: 2/4
Plot development: 2/4
Overall enjoyment: 1/2
Did it deserve a spot on the longlist? For originality of concept and locale, perhaps yes.
Total: 13/20

Have you read this one? Let us know what you thought.

Our panel’s final rankings