The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
Product ID: 525942211
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WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • The acclaimed memoir about fathers and sons, a legacy of loss, and, ultimately, healing—one of The New York Times Book Review ’s ten best books of the year, winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize When Hisham Matar was a nineteen-year-old university student in England, his father went missing under mysterious circumstances. Hisham would never see him again, but he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. Twenty-two years later, he returned to his native Libya in search of the truth behind his father’s disappearance. The Return is the story of what he found there. The Pulitzer Prize citation hailed The Return as “a first-person elegy for home and father.” Transforming his personal quest for answers into a brilliantly told universal tale of hope and resilience, Matar has given us an unforgettable work with a powerful human question at its core: How does one go on living in the face of unthinkable loss? NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times • The Washington Post • The Guardian • Financial Times “A tale of mighty love, loyalty and courage. It simply must be read.” — The Spectator (U.K.) “Wise and agonizing and thrilling to read.” —Zadie Smith “[An] eloquent memoir . . . at once a suspenseful detective story about a writer investigating his father’s fate . . . and a son’s efforts to come to terms with his father’s ghost, who has haunted more than half his life by his absence.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “This outstanding book . . . roves back and forth in time with a freedom that conceals the intricate precision of its art.” — The Wall Street Journal “Truly remarkable . . . a book with a profound faith in the consolations of storytelling . . . a testament to [Matar’s] father, his family and his country.” — The Daily Telegraph (U.K.) “ The Return is a riveting book about love and hope, but it is also a moving meditation on grief and loss. . . . Likely to become a classic.” —Colm Tóibín “Matar’s evocative writing and his early traumas call to mind Vladimir Nabokov.” —The Washington Post “Utterly riveting.” — The Boston Globe “A moving, unflinching memoir of a family torn apart.” —Kazuo Ishiguro, The Guardian “Beautiful . . . The Return, for all the questions it cannot answer, leaves a deep emotional imprint.” — Newsday “A masterful memoir, a searing meditation on loss, exile, grief, guilt, belonging, and above all, family. It is, as well, a study of the shaping—and breaking—of the bonds between fathers and sons. . . . This is writing of the highest quality.” — The Sunday Times (U.K.) Review: Gratefully - Very good books. Easy arrival. Thanks Review: good service - very good book
| Best Sellers Rank | #39,180 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #84 in Writing Guides (Books) #595 in Family & Relationships #674 in Politics |
| Customer Reviews | 4.3 out of 5 stars 4,426 Reviews |
A**I
Gratefully
Very good books. Easy arrival. Thanks
A**R
good service
very good book
S**N
A journey worth taking but still incomplete
In a war-torned country, a son hopes against all hopes to find his father who is captured and kept in a secret location. As Hisham fights his demons, he makes us look at how unpredictable and unfair the life can be amidst conflict. A very decent book, with facts weaved in seamlessly, it still very bizarrely and conveniently ignores the role of women in a revolution. At the end, you walk away with a feeling that there could have been so much more to the story, especially more on how humanity suffers at the hands of power hungry people. I would rather recommend Istanbul Istanbul as it brings alive the human sacrifice in the face of greater good rather craftily.
A**R
Four Stars
Book was awesome, very aweful delivery
E**E
Good
A well written book about the deepest love and loss a person can bear. Worth a read for sure
B**Y
That it is a true story - makes it that much alluring and chilling. An amazing gift of weaving in and out of events. Remarkable resilience both By the father and the son.
That it is a true story - makes it that much alluring and chilling. An amazing gift of weaving in and out of events. Remarkable resilience both By the father and the son.
J**E
The Poetry of Grief and Memory and Hope
Among the most beautifully written and elegiac of memoirs that I have ever read. A tale of memories and places connected with family - grand-fathers and fathers - uncles and cousins - in exile and incarcerated in the prisons of invaders and of dictators. Torture mixed with searching - smuggled letters and whispers of sightings - oh weep for Libya and the interference of selfish vested interests! Hisham MATAR tells the story of too many of us - of suffering in our own lands -and of dispersal to the world. I write this brief review in Australia where a banal-looking self-described "democratic" government locks up asylum-seekers fleeing despots - then tortures them in off-shore island gulags - unto death - while bleating about keeping the citizens safe with strong border controls. Hideous! Beyond hideous. Our Quaddafi goes under various names - including those of Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Dutton - among others. This books shines a spotlight on dictatorships in general. Thank you Hisham MATAR!
N**T
When we put economic growth before human rights....a book for our time
Privileged access into the psyche of the son of a Libyan political dissident, who strives to come to terms with the fact that his father - who was arrested without warning during the author's childhood - was probably killed in a State authorised massacre whilst a political prisoner in Libya's most infamous prison. At times this was a desperately sad read. It reminded me, in parts, of the narratives of Auschwitz survivors and religiously affiliated prisoners of the former Eastern Bloc Communist regimes. Overall this was a book that made me commit - emotionally, practically and financially - to the promotion of universal human rights; and not many books in my experience have made such an impression.
F**.
I read it a long time ago
I think I enjoyed this book but I don't remember to develop more, sorry!
G**N
Life Under A Tyrant Strongman
Hisham Matar’s, The Return, is neither a straightforward autobiography, nor a neat chronicle of Libya under tyranny. It merits reading for two reasons. First, it does provide detailed sketches of what life was like under Gaddafi. Second, it is a testament to the power of a son’s love for his father. I’m going to focus on the former. Libya, for good or ill, is not much written about in the United States and, when it is mentioned, the news is almost always bad, if not tragic. First and foremost, there’s Lockerbie, and more recently, the fact that a former President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been charged with taking funds from Libya in exchange for political favors.) There can be no doubt that Libyans suffered under a tyrannical regime while Gaddafi ruled. One of the great attributes of Mr. Matar’s text is that he takes readers deep inside the fascist state and exposes its many crimes. Surely, one of the saddest stories I’ve read anywhere is Matar’s account of a mother who, every year for five years, visited the prison in Tripoli where she understood her son to be held. She was never permitted to see her son, but the guards assured her that the meals she cooked and the gifts she brought would be delivered to him. Without fail, they encouraged her to return and wished her better luck next time. And, return she did, year after year, not knowing that her son had been dead all those years. Matar has a great eye for detail and a novelist’s ability to capture that detail in prose. In my experience, books like this don’t come around that often. Readers ought to take advantage of it.
P**O
Maravilhada
Adorei o livro. Conciso, preciso, rico, tocante, realista. Expõe os sentimentos humanos, o que é importante, em construções imagéticas que tocam profundamente nossa alma..
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