The Return - Hisham Matar - A Short Summary & Review
The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land In Between - Hisham Matar - A Short Summary & Review
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
A Rite of Fancy Book Recommendation and Review
A short summary:
The Return by Hisham Matar is a memoir shaped by absence. After decades of uncertainty, Matar returns to Libya following the fall of Muammar Gaddafi to search for traces of his father, a political dissident abducted and likely killed by the regime.
The book is not a conventional investigation. Instead, it unfolds as a meditation on exile, memory, loyalty, and the moral cost of authoritarian power. Matar weaves personal grief with Libya’s fractured history, exploring what it means to love a country that has taken so much from you, and to continue believing when proof is scarce or impossible.
At its core, The Return asks what justice can look like when truth may never fully surface, and how people endure when answers are indefinitely deferred.
My favorite quote from the book:
"Men are their actions."
- Hisham Matar, The Return
Questions to ponder while reading:
My review:
Not knowing, Matar makes clear, can be more damaging than knowing the worst.
The uncertainty surrounding his father’s fate permeates every page, creating a quiet, sustained ache rather than a dramatic revelation. This restraint is the book’s strength. Matar refuses spectacle; he writes with dignity, clarity, and moral seriousness.
The memoir also offers a sober warning about intervention. Western interference, the book suggests, is not automatically corrective, and often fails to understand the depth and texture of the societies it seeks to reshape. Change imposed from the outside rarely heals wounds formed from within.
What stayed with me most is Matar’s steadiness. I deeply admire those who maintain their beliefs despite severe consequences. The Return honors that courage without romanticizing it, acknowledging both the cost of conviction and the price of silence.
This is not an easy read, but it is a necessary one.
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.
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