Hisham MatarSpeaker and Booking Agent Information

Hisham Matar is a British-Libyan novelist, essayist, and memoirist of Libyan descent. Raised partly in Tripoli and Cairo after his family fled Gaddafi’s regime due to his father's political dissent, he immigrated to London. His debut novel, “In the Country of Men” (2006) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir “The Return” (2016) movingly recounts his search for his father, abducted in 1990 and likely murdered in a Libyan prison. Other works include “Anatomy of a Disappearance" (2011), A Month in Siena (2019), and the novel "My Friends” (2024). Matar’s writing explores exile, loss, dictatorship, friendship, and belonging. He teaches at Barnard College, Columbia University, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and his books have been translated into over thirty languages.