Attention: Hisham Matar has recently won a 2017 Pulitzer Prize for The Return. Unfortunately due to a clash with the awards ceremony he will no longer be appearing in the Auckland Writers Festival.  

 

Hisham Matar’s writing is infused with his own story. His father was a leading Libyan dissident who was kidnapped and imprisoned, never to be seen again.

Matar’s novel In The Country of Men rawly recounts days of terror and betrayal in Libya; his more recent memoir The Return is a treatise on terror, grief and exile, and a detective story of sorts as he pieces together his father’s fate and that of his country’s.

The Man Booker Prize shortlister speaks with Michael Williams. Supported by Auckland Writers Festival platinum patrons Betsy and Michael Benjamin.