Here’s a heavy novel about exile, friendship and family. As a young Libyan student in England in the 1980s, Khaled has literary dreams. But history has other ideas. After a protest at the Libyan embassy, there’s no going home. Now he has to make his way in a foreign land while hopefully keeping Khaddafi’s regime from punishing the family back in Benghazi.
Khaled’s life is a case of not belonging here and not belonging there, of trying to embrace a new world that carries old-world sorrows and longings personified by the trials of fellow exiles. My Friends is sometimes dour and at all times humorless. It’s also intellectual when a touch of human emotion might be more apt, but it’s also hard to put down. For light escapism, go elsewhere. For a good look at what exile does to a person, I can’t think of a better novel.