Hisham Matar was 19 in 1990 when his father, a prominent Libyan dissident, was seized in Cairo by Egyptian secret police and delivered to Libyan authorities. Jaballa Matar was held for about six years in a notorious Tripoli prison, and then no more was heard of him. Much of the younger Matar’s adult life has been ruled by unknowns, and they form the foundation for his breathtaking memoir, “The Return.” The book is constructed as two interwoven narratives. One is the story of a closing: the kidnapping, incarceration and disappearance of Matar’s father. The parallel story is of an opening, as the son spends two decades peeling away layers of obscure, unreliable details from ex-prisoners and craven Libyan officials to try to uncover what happened to his father. Matar, a Barnard College professor of English and New Yorker contributor, has produced two acclaimed novels about fathers who go missing under Middle Eastern dictatorships. “The Return” is an elegy by a son who, through his eloquence, defies the men who wanted to erase his father and gifts him with a kind of immortality.

Random House

Review: A son’s contemplative search for his father long missing in Gaddafi’s Libya