The Return

Summary

The Return is a memoir in which Hisham Matar recounts his search for his father, Jaballa Matar, a Libyan political dissident who disappeared in 1990 after being abducted in Egypt and taken to a prison in Libya. For years, Matar has lived with uncertainty about his father’s fate, holding on to memories and fragments of information while his family remains scattered by exile. Following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011, Matar returns to Libya for the first time in decades, hoping to discover what happened to his father and reconnect with the country he left behind as a child. His journey becomes both a personal investigation and a reflection on the lasting effects of dictatorship, political violence, and displacement. Through intimate recollections of family life, childhood, and loss, Matar explores the complex bonds between fathers and sons, the power of memory, and the emotional cost of living without answers. The memoir is a moving meditation on love, belonging, and the search for truth in the shadow of historical trauma.