My Friends by Hisham Matar is one of the most powerful books I’ve read (yes I cried).

A painful yet somehow still tender exploration of friendship, exile, and the emotional architecture of home. This novel feels like a love letter not only to the people that grace our lives but also to the different places me call home (whether we want to or not).

Through the narrator’s POV, we see how Khaled navigates complex friendships, loyalty, grief, and the uncertainty of displacement. Matar invites us into the intimate spaces of friendship with passages that left me in tears at how they captured grief shared with another (the passages about trauma bonding are next level). There is complexity in the characters, with some of them pissing you off at times- it’s definitely not a book for typecast characters but those with layers.

The novel is perfectly named. There are friends who give you their apartment without question, friends who collapse your world with spontaneity, and friends who become your family simply because they remind you of a home you had to leave behind. Even parents, in their recipe-sharing and late-night advice, become part of the community that helps carry you through. The use of silence in deepening connection was a theme throughout the novel that I haven’t seen done so perfectly in a book before. I also loved how the novel honors the role of language and writing in forging human connection. Stories are not just entertainment here—they are lifelines. 

I learned about the Libyan revolution against the Qaddafi regime during the “Arab Spring”. This book is historical fiction at its finest- multiple people you meet with depth of character and human emotion next to passages that are historical through and through.

This is a healing book. It is like “chicken soup for the friendship soul” as it pushed me to reflect on my own relationships. And for those who have had to flee the Middle East under oppressive regimes, who have built a second life and forged family abroad, this book will resonate. It’s a novel that makes you want to call your oldest friend, to cook your mother’s dish with the right amount of garlic, and to write the story you’ve been too scared to tell.