The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between

When Hisham Matar was a nineteen-year-old university student in England, his father went missing under mysterious circumstances. Hisham would never see him again, but he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. Twenty-two years later, he returned to his native Libya in search of the truth behind his father’s disappearance. The Return: Fathers and Sons and the Land in Between is the story of what he found there.

The Pulitzer Prize award for Best Biography or Autobiography said of The Return that it is:

[A]n exquisite meditation on history, politics, and art, a brilliant portrait of a nation and a people on the cusp of change...

Pulitzer committee

Time and time again the author is forestalled, put off, and lied to not only about the whereabouts of his father, but he can't even determine from ruling sources in the government if his father is even alive. Transforming his quest for answers into a brilliantly told universal tale of hope and resilience, Matar has written an unforgettable work with an eternal human conundrum at its center: How does one go on living in the face of unthinkable loss?

In addition to The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between, Matar has also written novels with identity, exile, and loss as themes. His most recent novel, published this year, is My Friends.