"The Return" Hisham Matar's Memoir - Pulitzer Prize Winner (2017)

Hisham Matar (b Amer 1970) is a British-Libyan author.  In the Pulitzer Prize winning "The Return" Matar writes his hauntingly beautiful story of returning to his Libya in 1990 to learn what became of his father, Jaballa Matar who was imprisoned in 1970 for his dissidence against the Gaddafi regime.  Matar's writing is not only a coherent account of life under the oppressive political reign of Gaddafi it's also a poetical expose on his personal search for his father and the repercussions of grief.  Matar writes so majestically the reader is empowered by his tenacity and deeply empathetic for his journey of grief.  After more than 20 years of embattlement with the Libyan & Egyptian government while living abroad, the release of many political prisoners including his uncles and cousins brings Matar gratification, remorse and defiance.  "I was keen to let them know how much I thought of them.  It was an exchange of promises and devotion, one colored, on their part, by the excitement of those who have survived an accident, and on mine, by the guilt of having lived a free life-guilyt but also a stubborn shamelessness that, yes, I had lived a free life."   Matar makes it clear that it is after being released from a long incarceration, only then does the injustice fully form.  Only then does comprehension come for the time has passed & how much of life has been lost.  Matar's persistence to pursue the emancipation of imprisoned dissidents and the gathering of information for what occurred made Matar a thorn in the side of both the Libyan and the British governments."  The comfortability of living in the US or the UK casts a sheen of indifference shielding us from acknowledging those living under inconceivable atrocities of censorship, torture, imprisonment & genocide.  "The Return" removes these blinders with obliterating light.   Matar's writing ponders grief with a profound gravitas.  "Grief is to a whodunit story, or a puzzle to solve, but an active and vibrant enterprise.  It is hard honest work.  It can break your back.  It is part of one's initiation into death."  Matar's masterful memoir flows outward from his own family in search of answers and leaves us all living in its aftermath.