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Hisham Matar Quotes

Hisham Matar is a Libyan/American writer. His memoir of the search for his father, The Return, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and the 2017 PEN America Jean Stein Book Award. His debut novel In the Country of Men was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. Matar’s essays have appeared in the Asharq al-Awsat, The Independent, The Guardian, The Times and The New York Times. His second novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance, was published on 3 March 2011. He currently lives and writes in London.

✵ 1970
Hisham Matar photo

Works

In the Country of Men
Hisham Matar: 4 quotes0 likes

Famous Hisham Matar Quotes

“I think of novelists that I really return to and admire, you can almost sense that the book is somehow ahead of them, just a little bit ahead of them, no? You could write from the front: you could pull the book; there are masters that do that, and you can admire the architecture of it. […] I suppose what I look for as a reader is a writer who's risky, who's putting themselves in a position that's vulnerable, where the text knows a little bit more, is a bit ahead of them. And so I aspire to write those books, and that's why I suppose I put myself in that position.”

Hisham Matar

at 43:30.
Blue Metropolis Festival (2013)

“I noticed that my problems occur when I try to dominate the text, when I try to ask it to be something, or to ask it to fit into some sort of structure, or when I ask it to compliment my ego, or all of these things. That's really where all my problems start from. Where it's going very well, is where I have sort of surrendered to it, you know, where I am behind the text, and I am watching, like a dancer who's following another dancer, and just watching where it might go next. All I want to be is, I want to be as ready and as available as possible for it. That seems to me all I really need to do.”

Hisham Matar

at 42:00.
Blue Metropolis Festival (2013)

“Premeditated details arrive, when you're writing, and my instinct is always to reach for the nearest weapon.”

Hisham Matar

at 37:50.
Blue Metropolis Festival (2013)

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