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fiepkesofie's review
5.0
‘wij zijn twee helften van dezelfde ziel, twee opengeslagen bladzijden van hetzelfde boek’
dinasamimi's review against another edition
4.0
Well written examination of grief and loss. Learned a lot about recent Libyan history. Storytelling felt a little disjointed at times -- found myself losing focus and getting a bit lost.
howtobebooks's review
5.0
A well deserved Pulitzer Prize for Hisham Matar, who speaks bravely about the terrible experiences his family faced under the Gaddafi regime and not knowing the fate of his diplomat father. It is gripping and terrifying to read how easy it was for the authorities to arrest and kill Libyans at will even on foreign soil and the complicity of western countries that allowed it to happen. Truly a harrowing and stirring autobiography.
fuzzyhebrew's review
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.0
Beautifully written and intense subject matter. The book talks about how to go on living and enjoying life when you do not know whether your loved ones are dead or alive. I was hoping Hisham would get some finality about whether his father was dead, but it does not seem so. The most concrete evidence we have is at the near end of the book, but it is not for sure.
tessyoung's review
4.0
This was by no means an easy read but it was a beautiful one.
Matar tells the story of his return to Libya, the country which he had left as a child. He returns in search of his father who had been abducted from exile in Egypt and imprisoned for political opposition. In parts incredibly personal, in others LeCarre'esque.
There's so much to this narrative but I wanted to share just a bit of one particular section of the book that really jumped out at me.
The description of Benghazi is perhaps one of the the best pieces of writing about the placeness of a city, of how differing periods of historic settlement, colonisation and ways of understanding the world are written into the fabric city and its identity. It's a wonderful piece of storytelling, all Libyan history told through a single city, but made even more compelling by the emotional charge from the entanglement of this national narrative with personal biography. Just beautifully done.
sarahbeth89's review
The writing style was boring, the timeline was vm difficult to follow and the main character was whiny.