(New York, 1970) Son of Libyan parents, he spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo. His first novel, In the Country of Men (2007), was translated into twenty-nine languages and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Guardian First Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Awardin the United States. He won six major international literary awards, including the Commonwealth Writers’sPrize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize, and the inaugural Arab American Book Award. In 1990, Hisham Matar’s father, an opponent of Gaddafi’s dictatorship, disappeared and has remained missing ever since. Other successful publications of his have been Anatomy of a Disappearance (2012) and The Return, published in July 2016.
Photo: © Diana Matar