My Friends

'I was convinced that my two friends represented two separate and irreconcilable parts of my life that I had somehow to keep in balance, and that if it were not for me, they would never see each other. But time would prove me wrong.'Khaled and Mustafa meet at university in Edinburgh: two Libyan eighteen-year-olds expecting to return home after their studies. In a moment of recklessness and courage, they travel to London to join a demonstration in front of the Libyan embassy. Government officials open fire, killing a policewoman and wounding eleven Libyan demonstrators. Both friends are critically injured and their lives are forever changed.Over the years that follow, Khaled, Mustafa and their friend Hosam, a writer, are bound together by their shared history. If friendship is a space to inhabit, theirs becomes small and inhospitable when a revolution in Libya forces them to choose between the lives they have created in London and the lives they left behind.MY FRIENDS is a masterful novel about the devastating effects of exile and the beautiful endurance of friendship from the Pulitzer prize-winning, Booker-shortlisted Hisham Matar.