Hisham Matar is a highly acclaimed literary fiction author, best known for his bestselling novel "The Return." He was born in New York City in 1970, where his father was working for the Libyan delegation to the United Nations. However, when Matar was just three years old, his family returned to Tripoli, Libya, where he spent his early childhood. Due to political persecutions by the Ghaddafi regime, his family was forced to flee the country in 1979, and they went into exile in Egypt. It was there that Matar and his brother completed their schooling in Cairo.
In 1986, Matar moved to London, United Kingdom, where he continued his studies and received a degree in architecture. However, his family's tumultuous past continued to haunt him, as his father, a political dissident, was kidnapped in Cairo in 1990. The family received two letters with his father's handwriting in 1996, stating that he had been kidnapped by the Egyptian secret police and handed over to the Libyan regime, and was being imprisoned in the notorious Abu-Salim prison in Tripoli. Since that date, there has been no more information about his father's whereabouts.
Despite this personal turmoil, Matar began writing poetry and experimenting with theatre. He began writing his first novel "In the Country of Men" in the early 2000s, and in 2005, the publishers Penguin International signed a two-book deal with him. The novel was a huge success, and Matar has since established himself as a significant voice in contemporary literature. His writing often explores themes of exile, identity, and political upheaval, drawing from his own experiences as a child of political refugees.