My Friends – Hisham Matar

A moving study of friendship and exile during the reign of Qaddafi. Khalid, a student from Benghazi, obtains a scholarship to study in Edinburgh. His dreamy student existence comes to an abrupt end when he and a fellow student are gravely wounded at a political demonstration against the Libyan regime. Fear of the regime prevents his return to Libya and forces him to be honest with his parents about his new life in London. A chance encounter with an enigmatic writer whose work had marked Khalid as a teenager develops into a life-long friendship which is tested during the Libyan revolution and downfall of Qaddafi. I loved the remark from Khalid’s writer friend who could see no point in owning a book unless one intended to read it multiple times but that Montaigne disagreed, “believing that the presence of books cultivates you and that books are not only to be read but to be lived with.”

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