“Grenfell, the building set on fire with the help of its own face, is a scene of a complex injustice: one that is moral, economic, political, and aesthetic. Not only was the cladding unsafe, it was ugly; not only was it ugly, it was untrue both to the architecture of the building it covered and untrue to its responsibility to human safety.”

American-born British-Libyan novelist, essayist, and memoirist

Hisham Matar is an American-born British-Libyan novelist, essayist, and memoirist. He is known for writing about exile, loss, family, and political violence, often through work shaped by his own experience of displacement. His debut novel, In the Country of Men, was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. His memoir The Return, which follows the search for his father, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and several other awards. His essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New York Times, and elsewhere, and he has written several other novels.