Hisham Matar: Literature as a Translation of Humanity

Chosen Tongue

Hisham Matar was born in New York City to Libyan parents. He spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo and has lived most of his life in London. He is the author of the novels In the Country of Men, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and Anatomy of a Disappearance. His two memoirs are: The Return, which was the recipient of a 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Award, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, France’s Prix du Livre Etranger Inter & Le Journal du Dimanche and Germany's Geschwister Scholl Prize, and A Month in Siena, a meditation on grief, art and human intimacy. His most recent book, published in January 2024, is the novel My Friends, which has recently won an Orwell Prize and been longlisted for the Booker Prize. Matar is a Professor at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts. His work has been translated into over thirty languages.