Hisham Matar’s My Friends is a novel about three friends living in political exile due to the oppressive Gaddafi regime in Libya. The book is narrated by Khaled Abd al Hady, who left Benghazi in 1983 to attend the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and has lived in London for thirty-two years. Khaled’s life goes through challenging times under Gaddafi’s dictatorship; he suffers from being away from his family and faces difficulties in starting over a new place. Throughout the novel, Matar skilfully navigates the delicate balance between the personal and the political. The characters’ struggles are inextricably linked to the broader historical and social forces shaping their lives.
Analytical Digest
MORE FROM CURRENT CATEGORY
The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power
The fall of Kabul in August 2021 exposed a problem that had troubled American interventions long before the war in Afghanistan. The United States...
From Protection to Integration: Colombia’s Migration Experiment
Strategic Argument and Areas of Debate
The Colombian model represents a fundamental shift from security-centred deterrence to socioeconomic regularisation, yet it risks institutional fragmentation if national policy objectives outpace local service capacity. This...
The Syrian Civil War Through the Lens of Syrian Documentary Filmmakers
Strategic Argument and Areas of Debate
The Syrian Civil War operates as a dual battlefield where territorial control is secondary to the struggle over historical...