Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The Libyan writer's debut novel, In the Country of Men, drew on experience (Matar lost his father to Gaddafi's jails) but filtered it through a fine mesh of fictional art.
In its successor, we meet an exiled politician from a nameless Arab nation which has replaced its king with a bizarre tyranny. Kamal Pasha lives with son Nuri in Cairo.
Later, in Geneva, Father vanishes – abducted, it seems, by his foes. For Nuri, this absence squats like "a weight on my chest".
Sculpted in a prose of classical precision, the novel becomes the story not only of Nuri's grief for a ghost but of the four women who dominated their lives.
Nuri's education in love and loss has an erotic frisson and fragile grace that lend the book its slow crescendo of emotion.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments