My Friends: A Novel
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • A “masterly” (The New York Times, Editors’ Choice), “riveting” (The Atlantic) novel of friendship, family, and the unthinkable realities of exile, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Return
“A profound celebration of the sustaining power of friendship, of the ways we mold ourselves against the indentations of those few people whom fate presses against us.”—The Washington Post
ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST AND PUBLISHER WEEKLY’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, Time, NPR, BookPage
WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION • WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION
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.
“A profound celebration of the sustaining power of friendship, of the ways we mold ourselves against the indentations of those few people whom fate presses against us.”—The Washington Post
ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST AND PUBLISHER WEEKLY’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, Time, NPR, BookPage
WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION • WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION
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.
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Community Reviews
thenextgoodbook.com
What’s it about?
It is 1984 and Khaled is eighteen when he leaves Benghazi to study English Literature abroad. On a whim, he and his friend stop at a demonstration outside the Libyan embassy in London. When shots are suddenly fired from inside the embassy, Khaled is wounded, and his whole life changes.
What did it make me think about?
Friendship, trauma, and exile.
Should I read it?
This is a beautifully written book. A whole review could be written about the author’s prowess. And not only is it beautifully written, but the story gives you so much to think about. I had no idea that there had been a shooting in 1984 outside the Libyan embassy in London. What a starting point from which to write a fictional story. The story made me think about friendship and how fortunate we are to have those friends in our lives that we can rely on. ” ‘Friend. What a word. Most use it about those they hardly know. When it is a wondrous thing.’ ” This novel also made me feel how difficult it would be to live in exile from all you know as home. It is so easy to talk about immigration and forget we are often talking about people who cannot go back. “It turns out it is possible to live without one’s family. All one has to do is endure each day and gradually, minute by minute, brick by brick, time builds a wall.” As much as I appreciated this novel, I would be doing you a disservice if I did not say it is a slower-paced book. If you are looking for a plot to propel you through, this is not the book for you. It is contemplative, thought-provoking, and beautifully written, but not a page-turner.
Quote-
“I realized then that I had always somehow anticipated this, perhaps even from as far back as when I was fourteen and first heard his story read on the radio, that he would be a medium, that we ask of writers what we ask of our closest friends: to help us mediate and interpret the world.”
What’s it about?
It is 1984 and Khaled is eighteen when he leaves Benghazi to study English Literature abroad. On a whim, he and his friend stop at a demonstration outside the Libyan embassy in London. When shots are suddenly fired from inside the embassy, Khaled is wounded, and his whole life changes.
What did it make me think about?
Friendship, trauma, and exile.
Should I read it?
This is a beautifully written book. A whole review could be written about the author’s prowess. And not only is it beautifully written, but the story gives you so much to think about. I had no idea that there had been a shooting in 1984 outside the Libyan embassy in London. What a starting point from which to write a fictional story. The story made me think about friendship and how fortunate we are to have those friends in our lives that we can rely on. ” ‘Friend. What a word. Most use it about those they hardly know. When it is a wondrous thing.’ ” This novel also made me feel how difficult it would be to live in exile from all you know as home. It is so easy to talk about immigration and forget we are often talking about people who cannot go back. “It turns out it is possible to live without one’s family. All one has to do is endure each day and gradually, minute by minute, brick by brick, time builds a wall.” As much as I appreciated this novel, I would be doing you a disservice if I did not say it is a slower-paced book. If you are looking for a plot to propel you through, this is not the book for you. It is contemplative, thought-provoking, and beautifully written, but not a page-turner.
Quote-
“I realized then that I had always somehow anticipated this, perhaps even from as far back as when I was fourteen and first heard his story read on the radio, that he would be a medium, that we ask of writers what we ask of our closest friends: to help us mediate and interpret the world.”
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