Hisham Matar Books in Order

Hisham Matar is a Libyan-British novelist and memoirist, born in New York City, where his father served as a representative for the Libyan delegation to the United Nations. Matar's early childhood was spent in Tripoli, Libya, before his family was forced into exile in Egypt due to the Ghaddafi regime's persecution of his father in 1979. He completed his education in Cairo, later moving to London, where he studied architecture, earning a degree. The disappearance of his father, a political dissident, in 1990, and the subsequent discovery of cryptic letters hinting at his imprisonment, deeply influenced Matar's writing. He began composing poetry and experimenting with theatre before turning to fiction, writing his acclaimed debut novel, In the Country of Men, which was published in 2006 after signing a two-book deal with Penguin International in 2005.