My Friends

Closely analyze Mustafa al Touny, Rana Lamesse, and/or Hosam Zowa. How are these figures characterized? What is their role and wider significance in the text?

Explore the novel’s depiction of writing and communication. What various forms of writing and communication appear in the novel? How do they illustrate some of the novel’s key themes and ideas?

In My Friends, Khaled and his friends respond in different ways to the Arab Spring and to their Libyan identity more generally. What is the significance of these differences? How do their conceptions of political and personal identity overlap, or are held in tension with one another?

While the novel focuses heavily on friendship, Khaled and his friends also form romantic connections. How are romantic dynamics presented in the text? How do these romantic relationships aid in the development of characterization and/or thematic exploration?

Khaled’s reflections alternate between his present situation and his many flashbacks to the past. How does the narrative form relate to the novel’s commentaries on time, displacement, or identity?

Compare and contrast My Friends to another one of Hisham Matar’s works, such as Anatomy of a Disappearance. What key themes and ideas do the two works share? In what ways are they different or similar in how they address these themes?

Khaled often struggles with passivity and the sense that he should take a more active role in both a personal and political sense. How does the novel explore the dilemma of agency? What does the novel suggest about both the advantages and limitations of acting or not acting?

Analyze how the novel explores and interrogates the conception of home. How does My Friends examine some of the complexities surrounding home and belonging?