Although Hisham Matar was born in New York City, he spent much of his childhood in Tripoli, Libya. In 1979 his father, a Libyan representative to the United Nations, was accused of being a reactionary to the Libyan revolutionary regime and was forced to flee to Egypt with his family. There, Hisham spent a number of years in exile, before moving to London where he resides to this day.
Now, Matar is an award-winning author whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Financial Times, and The New York Times, among several other renowned publications. And this fall, he will teach an English class at Barnard. Spectrum had the opportunity to sit down with Matar and ask him about his new course, his childhood, and what it was like living in exile.
