BOOKS FROM LIBYAAnatomy of a Disappearance
by Hisham Matar
Description:
Nuri is a young boy when his mother dies. It seems that nothing will fill the emptiness that her strange death leaves behind in the Cairo apartment he shares with his father. Until Mona. When Nuri first sees Mona, sitting in her bright yellow swimsuit by the pool of the Magda Marina holiday resort, the rest of the world vanishes. But it is Nuri's father with whom Mona falls in love and who she will eventually marry. And their happiness consumes Nuri to the point where he longs to get his father out of the way. However, Nuri will soon regret what he wished for. And, as he and his stepmother's world is shattered by events beyond their control, they both begin to realise how little they really knew about the man they loved. In a voice that is delicately wrought and beautifully tender, Hisham Matar asks, in his extraordinary new novel, when a loved one disappears how does their absence shape the lives of those who are left? 'Two things stood out as I read Anatomy of a Disappearance. First, there was the quiet power of the language, and the author's control of it. Second, there was Hisham Matar's ability to tell a story that from the first sentence seems inevitable, yet is full of surprises. I was moved and very impressed.' Roddy Doyle 'A curiously engaging story that takes one into a world that seem as simultaneously remote and familiar as something in a dream. Each time I had to put it down I couldn't wait to get back to it' Michael Frayn 'Matar has a wonderfully spare and lucid style. The novel is all the more powerful for the restraint with which the author writes of a son's loss and loss and longing for his father.' Daily Mail 'A beautifully crafted tale.' FT 'Sensually written, there is an extravagant feel even to the simplest sentence and an almost claustrophobic desire, a 'dark tenderness' for the physical presence of the departed.' Sunday Telegraph 'Haunting in every sense, Anatomy of a Disappearance is an absorbing novel that finds its eloquence in what is left unsaid and its most vivid imagery in what has been lost, possibly forever.' Sunday Times 'A tightly coiled, masterfully controlled narrative.' Independent on Sunday 'What is powerful, again, is Matar's sombre gift for absence and longing.' Guardian 'A poignant exploration of the half-state between grief and hope.' New Statesman