Hisham Matar, My Friends ** 1/2

My Friends is a novel about three Libyan men living in England during Qaddafi's reign, and their differing responses when that regime begins to falter. As in his non-fiction book The Return, Matar effectively conveys the emotion strain of living in exile.

I find Matar's writing style to be overly ornate, with strained metaphors and a plethora of Conradian subordinate clauses. My Friends is organized as a series of memories as our narrator Khaled walks home after seeing off his friend Hosam at the train station, but the conceit is applied sparingly, making it disorienting when Khaled refers to his location in the present day.

Lastly, Khaled is a disappointingly passive character. His personality is ill-defined, making it hard to understand what attracts Mustafa and Hosam to him. I didn't feel his passion for literature.