Why a Booktrail?
Various: Three friends living in political exile and the emotional homeland that deep friendships can provide
My Friends
What you need to know before your trail
Khaled and Mustafa meet at university in Edinburgh: two Libyan eighteen-year-olds expecting to return home after their studies. In a moment of recklessness and courage, they travel to London to join a demonstration in front of the Libyan embassy. When government officials open fire on protestors in broad daylight, both friends are wounded, and their lives forever changed.
Over the years that follow, Khaled, Mustafa and their friend Hosam, a writer, are bound together by their shared history. If friendship is a space to inhabit, theirs becomes small and inhospitable when a revolution in Libya forces them to choose between the lives they have created in London and the lives they left behind.
Locations
ResetTravel Guide
London, Edinburgh and Libya
The main location of the story is London with the other two only mentioned to give a key sense of the history that has led them here. It’s here where they protest outside the Libyan Embassy with dramatic results.
The settings within the novel are in fact history, family, revolution, living in a new country and friendship.
Set around violent real events, the locations change and represent changes in the lives of Khaled and Mustafa. They both study at the university in Edinburgh. All the time, they send back reports to their families in Libya and learn of events in their home country.
Edinburgh becomes an unwelcoming place as they have been denounced as traitors. They can’t return to Libya after what happened at the Embassy. Mustafa then heads to Manchester, while Khaled stays in London.
This is a story of home, place and where you feel you belong.
BookTrail Boarding Pass: My Friends
Destination: Edinburgh, London, Libya Author/guide: Hisham Matar Departure Time: Various
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