Nothing makes you feel more stupid than learning a new language. You lose your confidence. You want to disappear. Not be noticed.… — Hisham Matar Copy Share Image
Nothing we read can import new or foreign feelings that we don't, in one form or another, already possess. — Hisham Matar Copy Share Image
Switching languages is a form of conversion. And like all conversions, whether it's judged a failure or a success, it excites the… — Hisham Matar Copy Share Image
There and then, sitting beside her and within the strength of my adoration, I felt invincible. — Hisham Matar Copy Share Image
To be okay with not knowing is a sign of a mature person and a mature society. — Hisham Matar Copy Share Image
“History remembers Mussolini as the buffoonish Fascist, the ineffective silly man of Italy who led a lame military campaign in the Second World War,… — Hisham Matar Copy Share Image
Language is not just a code; you are writing into its history, into its tides. — Hisham Matar Copy Share Image
My parents were fairly laid-back, but there were certain things about which they were very strict. My brother and I were told never to… — Hisham Matar Copy Share Image
I am terribly interested in the paragraph: the paragraph as an object, the construction, and the possibilities of what a paragraph can do. — Hisham Matar Copy Share Image
My parents left Libya in 1979, escaping political repression, and settled in Cairo. I was nine. — Hisham Matar Copy Share Image
Libyans are deeply unsettled by Gaddafi and his regime's careless contempt for human life. The dictatorship is willing to employ any methods necessary to… — Hisham Matar Copy Share Image
My best hope is that Libya turns into a peaceful, sensible country that has all the things my father and lots of others have… — Hisham Matar Copy Share Image
Season of Migration to the North, by Tayeb Salih, is an eloquent and restrained portrait of one man's exile. It is a rare narrative… — Hisham Matar Copy Share Image
