My Friends - Hisham Matar
I read this back in November and forgot to blog about it. I probably would have left it but since it's now on the National Book Critics Circle longlist as well, and since I'm adding a category for those books on the Collections page I figured I should have something on the blog about it. I'm not going to write a full review, mainly because it's about 10pm right now, so I'm just going to type up what I wrote in my reading journal.
This took a long time to get through, purely because I had a lot of work to do and not much time to read. It was worth it, though.
I didn't (and still don't) know much about the Lbyan revolution of the embassy shooting in the '80s, but that didn't stop me enjoying this. The political backdrop/context is very important, of course, but it's really a story about friendship and found family.
I was surprised by how short the chapters are here. This has the pace of a thriller at times. Because it spans 30 years I sometimes lost track of the timelines and couldn't figure out when things were taking place, which is partly a product of how quickly this moves, but that confusion didn't usually last for very long.
What I really liked here was the comparison between Hosan and Mustafa and how their approach to rebellion and revolution takes opposite paths.
This was definitely worth the read, though I see why it didn't make it to the Booker shortlist (and also see why the Orwell Prize recognised it, though I of course haven't read the shortlisted titles there aside from James). I'll be interested to see how it compares to the other books on the National Book Critics Circle list when I get around to them.