Hisham Matar wins The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction
Congratulations to Hisham Matar for winning this year’s Orwell Prize for Political Fiction for his novel My Friends (Viking)
My Friends by Matar—chosen from a shortlist of eight novels—explores the fallout of the 1984 shootings at the Libyan embassy in London, and its effect on three Libyan friends living in exile in Britain.
Alexandra Harris, who chaired the political fiction panel, said: "My Friends is a work of grace, gentleness, beauty and intellect, offered in the face of blunt violence and tyranny. The shootings at the Libyan embassy in London in 1984 reverberate through the novel, defining the lives of young men who cannot risk return to their families and their native country. Matar’s response to those gunshots is a richly sustained meditation on exile and friendship, love and distance, deepening with each page as layers of recollection and experience accrue."
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