num_pages: 256
description: From Man Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Hisham Matar a memoir of his journey home to his native Libya in search of answers to his father's disappearance. In 2012 after the overthrow of Qaddafi the acclaimed novelist Hisham Matar journeys to his native Libya after an absence of thirty years. When he was twelve Matar and his family went into political exile. Eight years later Matar's father a former diplomat and military man turned brave political dissident was kidnapped from the streets of Cairo by the Libyan government and is believed to have been held in the regime's most notorious prison. Now the prisons are empty and little hope remains that Jaballa Matar will be found alive. Yet as the author writes hope is persistent and cunning. This book is a profoundly moving family memoir a brilliant and affecting portrait of a country and a people on the cusp of immense change and a disturbing and timeless depiction of the monstrous nature of absolute power.
language: English
title: The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
publisher: Knopf Canada