The novels of Hisham Matar and Priscilla Morris speak to us now more than ever. ‘My Friends’, the new novel by Booker-shortlisted, Pulitzer prize-winning author Hisham Matar, is a masterful, intensely moving novel about three friends living in political exile and the emotional homeland that deep friendships can provide from the of ‘The Return’. Priscilla Morris’ Women’s Prize-shortlisted novel ‘Black Butterflies’ is set in Sarajevo in the spring of 1992, where each night, nationalist gangs erect barricades, splitting the diverse city into ethnic enclaves and each morning, the residents — whether Muslim, Croat or Serb - push the makeshift barriers aside. This podcast was recorded at West Cork Literary Festival on 16 July 2024 and Hisham and Priscilla were in conversation with Maeve Higgins.
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Hisham Matar was born in New York to Libyan parents, spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo and has lived most of his life in London. His memoir The Return was the recipient of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Award, the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, Frances Prix du Livre Etranger Inter & Le Journal du Dimanche and Germany’s Geschwister Scholl Prize. Hisham is a Professor at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts. His latest novel My Friends was published by Viking in January 2024.
Priscilla Morris is a British author of Bosnian-Cornish parentage. She grew up in London, spending summers in Sarajevo, and studied at Cambridge University and the University of East Anglia, where she gained her PhD in Creative Writing. She teaches creative writing, most recently at UCD, and divides her time between Ireland and Spain. Her Sarajevo-set debut novel Black Butterflies was short-listed for the Women’s Prize 2023 and several other notable awards.
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