Hisham Matar’s revered Father, businessman and wealthy ex-Libyan Jaballa Matar, was a financier hero of several mysterious and failed Libya liberation movements fighting against the alpha male dictator Muammar Qaddafi. Muammer Qaddafi had engineered a coup in Libya in 1969 overthrowing Libya’s monarch, and he soon began a campaign of torture and terror to kill any possible political competition.



Very male author Hisham Matar, the respected masculine writer of this award-winning very masculine-gendered book, had manfully loved, admired, and pined away for his masculine missing Father for decades.



All of you who prefer living in a world without women except for the females who cook or serve meals silently can relax now, as I will follow the male author Hisham Matar’s example from here forward and pretend no women live or have ever existed in Libya, New York City, Rome, Nairobi, London or Cairo as Matar details for us his masculine-gender only autobiography and award-winning memoir, ‘The Return’.



‘The Return’ mostly is sort of a masculine-gender only literary diary of masculine Hisham Matar manfully searching for his missing masculine Father, Jaballa Matar, the masculine-gender idol of all his yearning. Hisham manfully questions, calls and visits manly Libyan men and masculine-gender Libyan relatives who were involved with his masculine Father. Through flashbacks, we also learn a bit about Libya’s infamous alpha-male Qaddafi dictatorship.



Hisham Matar was born in New York City where only masculine-gendered people apparently live. The Libyan diplomat Jaballa Matar and family returned to Libya when masculine-gender Hisham was three. When masculine Hisham was nine, the Matars fled to men-only-matter Egypt because of Libya's dictator Qaddafi’s political oppression. Masculine-gender Hisham finished growing up in men-only-matter Egypt until he went to London to attend school and university at age 15. While Hisham was in London at age 19, he received word Jaballa had been kidnapped from Cairo by agents of Muammer Qaddafi, butch masculine-gender Libyan leader-for-life (which actually worked out to be 42 years). The kidnapping of Jaballa occurred in 1990. Except for two letters, the masculine Matar family in Egypt never heard from Jaballa again.



So masculine-gender Hisham wrote this male-angst memoir about his one admired manly masculine-gender parent and about some of Libya’s recent history, despite that his, ugh, female mother has apparently hung about for all of his life so far, although only in the background making sure manly Matar had Libyan olive oil wherever the family lived. Matar appreciated her (ugh) ability to find Libyan olive oil.



Some of the surviving masculine-gender Matar relatives were imprisoned with masculine Jaballa in the infamous butch Libyan prison, Abu Salim. Jaballa was imprisoned and tortured after being kidnapped from men-only-matter Egypt. Abu Salim was attacked by anti-Qaddafi rebels in 2011 when Qaddafi was overthrown and all of the masculine-gender prisoners who were still alive were released. They all spoke of a massacre of masculine-gender prisoners in 1996. Manly Hisham suspects his still missing masculine-gender Father met his death in this massacre of prisoners.



Libyans initially were happy about macho Qaddafi’s coup. However, Qaddafi soon followed in the footsteps of all butch African and Middle-eastern leaders and established a strict masculine kleptocrat dictatorship with male theocratic pretensions. He staged a number of political purges of important rich male Libyans. Many Libyans went into exile in the men-only-matter country of Egypt after fleeing Libya. Jaballa made his home in Egypt with a lot of loyal male relatives, raising his two boys single-handed, apparently, without any women helping or even many existing apparently (mother mentioned as confined to the kitchen). These male relatives and male friends, and some masculine-gender Qaddafi supporters, are the only people who matter in every chapter in the book.



There is an occasional mention of Matar’s wife, Diana. Diana is an artist and companion, so he puts her name into the book more often than mentions of his mom, but never with any implied or actual importance.



Not once did Matar mention any other women except the brief sentences about his agent, mother and wife ghosting through occasionally in all of these hundreds of pages and pages and pages of different men meeting, drinking, eating and talking about history, grief, death and politics in different countries. You know what I mean, important talk and memories only those humans with brains know and retain - stuff women could not possibly understand or have any knowledge about, since whatever any woman may have heard, seen, experienced or witnessed is completely beyond any female's mental capacity to process.



I happen to know that women do exist in Libya, Egypt, London and New York City, including women who suffered in prisons and who fought against cruel political oppression or who have feelings they express about their imprisoned husbands, fathers and sons. I suspect Matar's Mom and Diana actually have opinions and sufferings. Maybe the Pulitzer judges are ok with this author’s overt sexism and sneaky hidden literary suppression by omission of any recognition of the sufferings of Matar women in the family, but I am not. This book is unforgivably oppressively sexist. Matar didn’t even feel it necessary to write of the Matar women or give them a voice in his memoir to speak of his family’s tragedy. Matar gives the impression he feels women are only brainless uncaring sheep, particularly when mentioning his mother. Women are apparently too unimportant or unaware for any inclusion or mention in these pages about the Matar family grief and losses experienced in these horrific civil wars and atrocities.



This book is not recommended by me. It is sexist garbage, oppressing and politically suppressing women by omission even as it condemns the oppression of Libya’s men.