“I lost my father when I was 19, so the majority of my life has been under this cloud, and I have been full of the intention to find out what happened.”

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.