HT reviewer Pranavi Sharma picks her favourite read of 2024
A novel that spans three decades of personal and political upheaval but is set over the course of a single two-hour walk through London
The first time I spotted Hisham Matar’s My Friends, it was tucked inconspicuously into the newly releases section of a Delhi bookstore. It was February and I was nursing a quarter-life friendship crisis that made the title impossible to ignore. A quick Google search informed me that Matar, a Libyan-born American author, already had a Pulitzer for his 2016 memoir, The Return, and had authored three other books. How had I missed him? My literary education growing up had been sparse, and only recently had I begun discovering voices from across the world. The book was paid for in minutes, and by the end of the week, it had wrecked me in the most beautiful way.
Set over the course of a single two-hour walk through London, My Friends is a novel spanning three decades of personal and political upheaval. Khaled, the protagonist, recounts his friendship with two men, Mustafa and Hosam, against the backdrop of the brutal Libyan dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi. The story begins with a rupture, Khaled parting ways with a friend, and doesn’t so much explain this schism as explore its emotional and political reverberations.
Friendship, Matar suggests, is a high-stakes affair, as vital and treacherous as romance. “Friend. What a word. Most use it about those they hardly know, when it is a wondrous thing,” Khaled confesses. For Khaled, friendships are battlegrounds for ideology and intimacy. Mustafa, fervent and uncompromising, believes friendship should be monogamous, almost romantic. Hosam, more reserved, is unable to denounce the Libyan regime when given the chance, disappointing Mustafa and straining the trio’s delicate balance. Khaled, caught between these two poles, admits: “I was convinced that my two friends represented two separate and irreconcilable parts of my life.”
The book arrived at a time when I was grappling with my own sense of isolation, my small-town idealism about relationships battered by urban hyper-independence. Khaled’s longing for emotional nakedness with his friends struck me.
In a particular episode, Khaled finds a book on his father’s shelf by Salim el Lozi, a Lebanese journalist who was tortured and killed after returning to Beirut against all warnings. El Lozi called exile “the thermometer of our times.” Writers, he argued, “were never their own masters” but carried the burden of translating their fractious worlds to the human race. In My Friends, Matar channels this truth, capturing the quiet grief of exile and the courage it takes to hold on to love, loyalty, and truth amid political chaos.
2024 in books reminded me of the necessity to rethink what we value and to confront ourselves on whether we are willing to take a stand for the ones we love. Friendships are as important as romantic relationships, if not more. I now no longer feel the need to chase some imagined standard of what a “real reader” is supposed to be. I suspect this book will haunt me for years, and I am quietly thrilled by the idea. Another is waiting to find me, no doubt, but there is no rush.
Pranavi Sharma writes on books and culture. She lives in New Delhi.
READ MORE: HT REVIEWERS PICK THEIR FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2024