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Anatomy of a Disappearance

3.44 of 5 stars 3.44 · rating details · 941 ratings · 221 reviews

Nuri is a young boy when his mother dies. It seems that nothing will fill the emptiness that her strange death leaves behind in the Cairo apartment he shares with his father. Until Mona.When Nuri first sees Mona sitting in her bright yellow swimsuit by the pool of the Magda Marina holiday resort, the rest of the world vanishes. But it is Nuri’s father with whom Mona falls...more

Paperback, 247 pages

Published April 29th 2011 by Penguin Viking (first published 2011)

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Aug 29, 2011 Kwesi 章英狮 rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: e-book, hisham-matar, 2011

My father is a quite type, you will always see him sitting in a sofa watching television or sitting in the near bench. He never cared of his surroundings or maybe I'm too heartless to share his feelings. I live with that kind of situation and never regret that I have a father like him. I lived closely with my mom and siblings and if you ask me, I used to having my mom at my side than sitting with my quite father.

Anatomy of Disappearance is written by Hisham Matar, a Libyan author and shortlisted...more

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Jan 06, 2013 Dina rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own-it

رواية ساحرة! اتردد كثيراً فبل قراءة أي كتاب مترجم إلى أن شجعتني رحاب بسام مؤكدة أن الترجمة جيدة جداً وبالفعل اللغة رائقة فلا تكاد تشعر ان الكتاب مترجم وأُحي محمد عبد النبي (المترجم) على المجهود الممتاز.
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السرد رائع والرواية فاتنة تدخلك عالم ناس أخرين بهدوء شديد وترفع عنك هم الأحداث الفرعية الغير مهمة إلى الأحداث الرئيسية المحركة فلا تشغلك عن المهم في القصة وتترك لك أبواب كثيرة مقتوحة لتأخذ منها الحقائق التي تروق لك كقارئ، ومع ذلك فهي لا تخلو من تقاصيل دقيقة لرسم الأشخاص وحبكة القصة.
رواية جميلة ،...more

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Feb 23, 2013 أحمد البخاري rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

من المؤكد أن هشام مطر يمزح .. ما هذا يا هشام !!

لاشك أن هشام يملك لغة سرد جميلة ومحكمة ، ولا يمكننا أن نصف هشام مطر بعدم الإحترافية أو السوء ، لكن هذه الرواية عدا اللغة التي كتبت بها سيئة بالفعل ، قصة متواضعة جداً ورتيبة إن لم أصفها بالمملة ، بالكاد أستطعت إكمالها ، الأحداث لا جديد فيها ولا إثارة .. عبارة عن وصف مشاعر بين شخصيات قليلة عبرالرواية ، النهاية سيئة للغاية ، لم أفهم ماذا يريد الكاتب وأين هي الرسالة الخفية الذي أراد إيصالها ، القصة نفسها متواضعة ولا تقدم جديد ، توقعت أن تكون هناك مفاجآت...more

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Feb 25, 2013 Aya Mamdouh rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

أنا المفروض اكتب رائي هنا عن الرواية ...انا لما خلصتها حسيت اني مش استفدت حاجة علي المستوى الفكرى ...بس يسطر عليا شعور وهو المكتوب علي ظهر الغلاف للرواية ..." يتساءل هشام مطر عن كيف نواصل الحياه رغم اختفاء لأحبابنا عنها" وكتشفت ان دا هو مغزى الرواية ..ازاى نكمل حياتنا وجوانا احساس بالفقدان ماحدش عارف يملئ مكانه ، احنا بنقدر وهنقدر نكمل حياتنا مش علشان البطل قدر يكمل ..لا ، لان دى فعلا الحقيقية .
اعتقد ان الكاتب بيقدر يسيطر علي مشاعر القارئ بدرجة تجعلك تنفصل عن الواقع بتأمن بان الروايه هي الواقع و...more

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Aug 27, 2012 Kim marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads

This book has an interesting cover! I am excited to have won it through First Reads and am looking forward to reading it.

3 likes · like · see review

Jul 27, 2011 Chad Sayban rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fair

When a young arab boy, Nuri, loses his mother to illness, he and his dissident father must emotionally support each other in their apartment in Cairo. However, bikini-clad Mona arrives in their lives, and Nuri must watch as his advances go unnoticed and she falls in love with his father. But when Nuri’s father disappears under mysterious circumstances, Nuri must come to grips with his relationships with his father and Mona while trying to find his own place in the world.

Hisham Matar does a good...more

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Feb 04, 2013 Nesma Zazou added it · review of another edition

كتاب محبط و قصة مكررة .. لم تحدد الرواية في اي خط تريد ان تسير .. لم استماع ع الاطلاق .. عندما تزور سراي مكتبة الشروق بمعرض الكتاب وفر ثمن هذا الكتاب و أكمل مجموعة عز الدين شكري أفضل .. و ان لم ترغب توجه لنهضة مصر أو سور الأزبكية و ابتاع ميكي

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Mar 11, 2013 Mitch rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction

What the author did well:

The story is mainly about a young son's relationship with his father- and what happens when that father mysteriously disappears. The author is masterful at dropping shards of clues as to what is going on with the father. This illustrates how fragmentarily an innocent child would perceive what is going on around him; while all the time giving a real sense of vague danger or threat.

What wasn't perhaps so good:

A lot of the vagueness is left unresolved. The usual formula in...more

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Mar 06, 2013 Ursula rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Is it possible to be enthralled by the writing and yet left wanting by the story of a book? Of course it is - and that's what happened for me with Anatomy of a Disappearance. The story centers around Nuri, who is twelve years old when his mother dies. Within a year, his father has remarried a younger woman, Mona. Nuri has complicated feelings about that, at least partially related to his jealousy of his father because of his own crush on Mona. Everything changes, though, when Nuri's father is ab...more

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Dec 12, 2012 شكري الميدي أجي rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

" تمر الاوقات يثقل فيها غياب أبي علي كأن هناك طفلاً جاثماً على صدري "

هكذا يبدأ الكاتب روايته التي استهلهما من عاملي بناء في الاسكندرية .

الرواية ليست غريبة في أحداثها .

أب مع ابنه - ذكرى والدة ميتة - خوف و عمل تحت الستار ضد نظام يظهر و لا يظهر و الجميع يعرف بأنه النظام الليبي و لكنه يمكن أن يكون اي نظام ديكتاتوري في العالم .

في البدء تظنها رواية ذكريات زمن الطفولة ، سرعانما تفكر مجدداً حين تظهر تلك الأغواءات و المتابعات الملحة من قبل الراوي - الطفل ، لإمرأة ، تكبره بنصف عمره .

مع أبيه في رحلة صيف...more

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Nov 20, 2012 Benjamin rated it 2 of 5 stars

I was disappointed by this book, but I'm not entirely sure it's the book's fault. I'd placed it on my think-about-it list and kind of forgot why I was even interested in it. I found it later and thought it might be a nice break from the heady novellas I'd been reading. It was a quick read—easy to follow and digest. I don't know why Hisham Matar has received so much praise in the past, because his prose certainly didn't dazzle.

The book moves in fits. Every fifty pages or so, something new happens...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Alice Meloy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Nuri el-Alfi is just 14 years old when his father disappears. With a credible portrayal of what goes on in a 14-year-old's mind, Matar focuses on the parts of the story that are meaningful to him: his mother's sudden death, his distant and preoccupied father's subsequent marriage to a young woman who becomes the focus of Nuri's obsession, Nuri's exile to boarding school in England, and the strange details of his father's kidnapping. We follow Nuri from his childhood in Cairo to England and Genev...more

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Aug 22, 2012 Colleen Clark rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Although clearly a work of fiction, the story of the disappearance of a politician in exile from an unnamed Middle Eastern country is informed by the fact the Matar's own father " a political dissident [from Libya], was kidnapped in Cairo. He has been reported missing ever since." (per Wikipedia entry).

In the novel the disappearance takes place in Geneva, Switzerland. Narrated in the first person by Nuri, who is fourteen when his father disappears, the story begins earlier in Egypt after the dea...more

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Jun 29, 2012 Brenda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reading-group-review-book, keeper, bookshelves

The blurb says.......In Egypt, Nuri, a teenage boy, falls in love with Mona-the woman his Father will marry. Consumed with longing, Nuri wants to get his father out of the way - to take his place in Mona's heart. But when his father disappears, Nuri regrets what he wished for. Alone, he and Mona search desperately for the man they both love, only for Nuri to discover a silence he cannot break and unimaginable secrets his father never wanted him to know.

A book that merits reading in one hit! Unfo...more

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Feb 25, 2012 Gina rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“There are times when my father’s absence is as heavy as a child sitting on my chest.”

With this tender opening sentence, Hisham Matar begins to weave a subtle pattern of absence and loss that defines the emotional territory of Anatomy of a Disappearance, his second novel.

The narrator of this beautifully paced story is Nuri el-Alfi, who at 14 loses his father when he disappears from an apartment in Geneva, likely the victim of a political kidnapping. The loss is unbearable yet even before his fat...more “There are times when my father’s absence is as heavy as a child sitting on my chest.”

With this tender opening sentence, Hisham Matar begins to weave a subtle pattern of absence and loss that defines the emotional territory of Anatomy of a Disappearance, his second novel.

The narrator of this beautifully paced story is Nuri el-Alfi, who at 14 loses his father when he disappears from an apartment in Geneva, likely the victim of a political kidnapping. The loss is unbearable yet even before his father’s disappearance we discover that Nuri is no stranger to the subtractions of life.

At birth, Nuri had already lost his native country when his father, a close advisor to the deposed king, is forced to flee to Egypt (from an unnamed country, but likely Iraq) after a military takeover. Safe in Cairo, the small el-Alfi family lives in a quiet luxury that belies the friction Nuri, an only child, senses between his parents. Nuri’s mother is habitually withdrawn, wrapped in a self-imposed silence, and his father travels often on business. The only constant in the boy’s lonely life is Naima, a young servant girl who is devoted to him in a way neither parent can seem to manage.

When he is ten, Nuri’s mother dies suddenly of an unnamed malady that the narrator, in retrospect, believes was the result of deep sorrow. “So old and persistent did Mother’s unhappiness seem that I never stopped to ask its true cause. Nothing is so acceptable as that which we are born into.”

Although in the end, Nuri will have three mothers, this is a story about the complicated relationship between fathers and sons. Like an insatiable thirst, Nuri craves an intimacy with his father that their love for each other fails to summon. He yearns “…for an easy sympathy… a kind of emotional eloquence and ease.”

Instead, his father unwittingly becomes Nuri’s rival when they both fall under the spell of the sensuous Mona, whom they meet poolside at a resort in Alexandria. The provocative Mona, half-English, half Arabic, quickly inspires a new nexus of desire in Nuri. The triangle – father, son and Mona – grows even more brittle and difficult when Mona becomes Nuri’s stepmother despite his insistence that “I saw her first.”

Soon after the marriage, Nuri is sent off to a boarding school in England where he concocts schemes to steal time with Mona when he goes home to Cairo. As is often the case, you must be careful what you wish for. After his father’s disappearance, the relationship with Mona unravels as his father’s secret life is slowly revealed. Nuri learns what most children rarely acknowledge, that we really know little about the lives of our parents.

This is semi-autobiographical ground for Matar, who was born in New York City to Libyan parents and raised in Tripoli and Cairo. His father, Jaballah Matar, was an influential businessman and a Qaddafi opponent, who was disappeared from Cairo in 1990 and interred in Libya. Not seen since 2002, it is not known whether he is still alive.

Now a resident of London, Matar’s first novel, In the Country of Men, was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2006. It also was narrated by a young boy growing up in Libya with an unhappy mother and an absent father. Yet knowing how closely his fiction runs to Matar’s life in no way undermines the power of his writing – the aching simplicity by which he builds mood and pitch.

“Relatives and neighbours who might have filled the chairs in the hall if Father had died were silent in the face of his disappearance…A great emptiness began to fill the place of my father. It became unbearable to hear his name…At times it was almost possible to imagine he never existed. Yet every morning, when I opened my eyes, I believed he was there, that I would find him sitting at the dining room table, holding a cup of coffee in the air as he looked down at the folded newspaper in his lap.”

In passage like these, Matar limns the borders of loss with a fine, delicate hand and reminds us that not knowing can be the heaviest burden to bear.
(less)

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Oct 03, 2011 Christine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: coming-of-age

Matar's prose is crisp, succinct, and elegant; I found much to admire in his style and in the pacing of the novel. The plot was interesting, but not riveting. Because the story is told as a series of flashbacks, I was prepared for the fact that many of the mysterious events of the story would not be fully explained. Nuri, the narrator and protagonist, describes the depth of his complicated feelings--for his father, his late mother, and especially his father's second wife Mona (about whom he asse...more

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Sep 23, 2011 Nicolemauerman rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is about Nuri who is just a teenager when his mother dies. While on vacation with his father they meet Mona, a young, beautiful 20 something woman who becomes part of their lives. Nuri's father disappears and the book focuses on Nuri's search for answers on his disappearance.

There were parts of this book that I loved. After the fathers disappearance I felt very involved in this book. However, it still left me wanting more. The author doesn't give a lot of description, which I sometime...more

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Sep 18, 2011 Gina Roitman rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“There are times when my father’s absence is as heavy as a child sitting on my chest.”
With this tender opening sentence, Hisham Matar begins to weave a subtle pattern of absence and loss that defines the emotional territory of Anatomy of a Disappearance, his second novel.
The narrator of this beautifully paced story is Nuri el-Alfi, who at 14 loses his father when he disappears from an apartment in Geneva, likely the victim of a political kidnapping. The loss is unbearable yet even before his fa...more
“There are times when my father’s absence is as heavy as a child sitting on my chest.”
With this tender opening sentence, Hisham Matar begins to weave a subtle pattern of absence and loss that defines the emotional territory of Anatomy of a Disappearance, his second novel.
The narrator of this beautifully paced story is Nuri el-Alfi, who at 14 loses his father when he disappears from an apartment in Geneva, likely the victim of a political kidnapping. The loss is unbearable yet even before his father’s disappearance; we discover that Nuri is no stranger to the subtractions of life.
At birth, Nuri had already lost his native country because his father, a close advisor to the deposed king, had been forced to flee to Egypt when a military regime took power. Safe in Cairo, the small el-Alfi family lives in a quiet luxury that belies the friction Nuri, an only child, senses between his parents. Nuri’s mother is habitually withdrawn, wrapped in a self-imposed silence, and his father travels often on business. The only constant in the boy’s lonely life is Naima, a young servant girl who is devoted to him in a way neither parent can seem to manage.
When he is ten, Nuri’s mother dies suddenly of an unnamed malady that the narrator, in retrospect, believes was the result of deep sorrow. “So old and persistent did Mother’s unhappiness seem that I never stopped to ask its true cause. Nothing is so acceptable as that which we are born into.”
Although in the end, Nuri will have three mothers, this is a story about the complicated relationship between fathers and sons. Like an insatiable thirst, Nuri craves an intimacy with his father that their love for each other fails to summon. He yearns “...for an easy sympathy... a kind of emotional eloquence and ease.”
Instead, his father unwittingly becomes Nuri’s rival when they both fall under the spell of the sensuous Mona whom they meet poolside at a resort in Alexandria. Mona is half-English, provocative and quickly, inspires a new nexus of desire in Nuri. The triangle – father, son and Mona - grows more brittle and difficult when Mona becomes Nuri’s stepmother despite his insistence that “I saw her first.”
Soon after the marriage, Nuri is sent off to a boarding school in England where he concocts schemes to steal time with Mona. As is often the case, you must be careful what you wish for. After his father’s disappearance, the relationship with Mona unravels as his father’s secret life is slowly revealed and Nuri learns what most children rarely acknowledge, that we really know little about the lives of our parents.
This is semi-autobiographical ground for Matar who was born in New York City to Libyan parents and raised in Tripoli and Cairo. His father, Jaballah Matar, was an influential businessman and a Qaddafi opponent, who was disappeared from Cairo in 1990 and interred in Libya. It is not known whether he is still alive as no one has seen him since 2002.
Now a resident of London, Matar’s first novel, In the Country of Men, was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2006. It also was narrated by a young boy growing up in Libya with an unhappy mother and an absent father. Yet knowing how closely his fiction runs to Matar’s life in no way undermines the power of his writing - the aching simplicity by which he builds mood and pitch.
“Relatives and neighbours who might have filled the chairs in the hall if Father had died were silent in the face of his disappearance...A great emptiness began to fill the place of my father. It became unbearable to hear his name...At times it was almost possible to imagine he never existed. Yet every morning, when I opened my eyes, I believed he was there, that I would find him sitting at the dining room table, holding a cup of coffee in the air as he looked down at the folded newspaper in his lap.”
In passage like these, Matar limns the borders of loss with a fine, delicate hand and reminds us that not knowing can be the heaviest burden to bear.

(less)

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Sep 05, 2011 Judy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: coming-of-age, libya-fiction, family-fiction, love, political-prisoners-fiction

"There are times when my father's absence is as heavy as a child sitting on my chest." This is a riveting, heart-wrenching story of a young boy who, without adult mentors, tries to understand mysteries in his Libyan expat family's life. Nuri wrestles with memories of his mother's death, his father's disappearance, his attraction for his stepmother, his relationship with servants.... Set in Cairo, England and Switzerland, this reads like another version of In the Country of Men.

"Hisham Matar was...more

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Jul 26, 2011 Ian Young added it · review of another edition

“Anatomy of a Disappearance” is Hisham Matar’s second novel, following on from “In the Country of Men”, which was shortlisted for the 2006 Booker Prize. It is a short but beautifully written book, told from the perspective of a boy (Nuri) whose father (a political dissident) disappears mysteriously while away from home. Central to the novel is Nuri’s relationship with his young stepmother (Mona), and his gradual developing understanding of his father’s hidden secrets in the years after his disap...more

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May 29, 2011 Aban (Aby) rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This novel covers events in the life of Nuri el-Alfi, from the time he is ten until his mid-twenties: the earlier death of his mother, the meeting with Mona who became his step-mother, his father's disappearance when Nuri is fourteen, and it finishes with Nuri "coming home" as an adult to start another phase of his life. The story starts (and ends) in Egypt, but also takes place in England and in Switzerland. Not only is the story a narrative, but it's also an in-depth exploration of Nuri's feel...more

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Mar 26, 2013 Iman rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

رشحتها لي إيمان خفاجي.. رغم حداثة صداقتنا إلا أنني أحب حماسها المفرط وهي تتكلم عن هذه الرواية أو تلك.. لذلك عندما رشحت لي "اختفاء" بدأت في قراءتها مدفوعة بتلك الحماسة وانتهيت منها في يومين..
شيء ما كان مختلفا في هذه الرواية.. حكاية الغياب.. ذاك الخواء الذي يطاردك كلما اختفى من حياتك شخص أحببته لتواجه الحياة دونه.. اﻷصعب الغائبون وهم معك.. حتى تغدو وحيدا جدا..
أحببت سرد قصة ذاك الفتى "نوري".. يتيم اﻷم وهيامه بزوجة أبيه "منى" مرورا بتطور مشاعره نحوها من خالص البراءة حتى خالص الاثم والندم ثم الهروب...more رشحتها لي إيمان خفاجي.. رغم حداثة صداقتنا إلا أنني أحب حماسها المفرط وهي تتكلم عن هذه الرواية أو تلك.. لذلك عندما رشحت لي "اختفاء" بدأت في قراءتها مدفوعة بتلك الحماسة وانتهيت منها في يومين..
شيء ما كان مختلفا في هذه الرواية.. حكاية الغياب.. ذاك الخواء الذي يطاردك كلما اختفى من حياتك شخص أحببته لتواجه الحياة دونه.. اﻷصعب الغائبون وهم معك.. حتى تغدو وحيدا جدا..
أحببت سرد قصة ذاك الفتى "نوري".. يتيم اﻷم وهيامه بزوجة أبيه "منى" مرورا بتطور مشاعره نحوها من خالص البراءة حتى خالص الاثم والندم ثم الهروب صعودا إلى البرود والرفض.. كان سردا إنسانيا صادقا غير فج.. ورغم كل شيء تعاطفت مع ذاك الصبي المغترب مع أهله.. المغترب عن أباه بعد موت أمه.. الوحيد تماما بعد اختفاء أبيه... إذ رغم فداحة الحدث أدركت أن ميله نحو "منى" لم يكن حبا بقدر ما هو احتياج لعاطفة تشغل الخواء الذي خلفه موت أمه ومن بعدها اختفاء أبيه.. لا أعرف.. شيء ما يجعلك تتعاطف مع يتيم اﻷم ولو صار ف الخمسين.. شيء تعرفهم به ولو مر ألف عام.. ما أعجبني هو قدرة هشام مطر على أسر هذا الشيء على الورق وفي طيات شخصية نوري.. ربما.. لمحة الحزن تلك في أعينهم... تعاملهم مع الفقد بصمت وانطواء على حزن لا يبوحون به.. اباءٌ غريب نتيجة احتياج لا يرتوي.. تقبلهم للعطف كشيء لا يستحقونه.. لا أدري.. لكنه في النهاية كان موجود ومرتبطا بوجود نوري في الحكاية..
أعجبتني أيضا لغة السرد ﻷكتشف أن الكتاب مترجم.. لذلك من الواضح أن المترجم بارع بالقدر الذي لا يشعرك بوجوده.. كان حقيقة أكثر من موفق ومحترف
تستحق اﻷربع نجمات.. وبالتأكيد.. الاقتناء والقراءة(less)

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Feb 19, 2013 Harsha Priolkar rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

A quick read in large print! Oh the Joy! After wading through The Famished Road, this one was a walk in the park. A clearly etched story-line told in straightforward prose, it was an easy, refreshing read.

As the title suggests, it's primarily about a disappearance - a father who disappears under mysterious circumstances, and how his young son deals with everything that follows. It is however also a coming of age story, and since I don't want to reveal the plot, I'll leave you to read for yoursel...more

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Feb 06, 2012 Saleem rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Beautifully written book. The prose is elegant and crisp, and Matar's voice has an understated and quiet power. I started reading it and couldn't put it down. The story is about the disapperance of Kamal, Nuri's father. Matar is able to express the feeling of something being snatched, with no explanation and no resolution. The characters are then left to search for their own resolutions and come to terms with the disappearance. The plot isn't the most thrilling, and most of the action seems to h...more

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Apr 22, 2012 Ali rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read Hisham Matar’s first novel “In the country of Men” – a few years ago and absolutely loved it. It has been a long old wait for this one – but it has been worth it.

I have seen some great reviews of this novel – but feel I can’t really do it justice. How can I put across the absolute pathos and beauty of this novel?

Two things stood out as I read Anatomy of a Disappearance. First, there was the quiet power of the language, and the author's control of it. Second, there was Hisham Matar's abil...more I read Hisham Matar’s first novel “In the country of Men” – a few years ago and absolutely loved it. It has been a long old wait for this one – but it has been worth it.

I have seen some great reviews of this novel – but feel I can’t really do it justice. How can I put across the absolute pathos and beauty of this novel?

Two things stood out as I read Anatomy of a Disappearance. First, there was the quiet power of the language, and the author's control of it. Second, there was Hisham Matar's ability to tell a story that from the first sentence seems inevitable, yet is full of surprises (Roddy Doyle )

A tenderly written novel with Shakespearean themes, it can be read as a deeply personal account of the losses that tyranny and exile produce (TLS

The story centres on Nuri a 12 year old boy as the novel opens –who is the son of a man living in exile in Cairo. After his mother’s sudden death Nuri’s father takes them on holiday to a resort in Alexandria – it is here they meet the beautiful Mona. Both boy and father are captivated by her. When his father marries Mona – Nuri is consumed with a mixture of complex feelings – one being envy. His father sends him to boarding school in England from where he continues to think about Mona and writes to her frequently.

Two years later there is another holiday – this time to Switzerland – a country his father travels to frequently. It is here that Nuri’s father suddenly disappears – is kidnapped apparently from the bed of another woman. Nuri and Mona are faced with the possibility that they didn’t fully know the man they love. His father had once worked for the executed King of their country – is an opponent of the regime that runs the country now. The country itself is never named in this novel – but it is clear it is Libya. Mona is convinced it is this regime that is responsible for her husband’s disappearance.

The disappearance of his father shapes the years that follow for Nuri – back at school his father’s disappearance is a secret he hugs to himself – not able to bring himself to talk about it even to his closest friend, Alexei. His relationship with Mona remains complex, but changes as the years pass.

“I began to feel I had been neglecting my father. I saw him waiting in a windowless room. I obsessed about what I could do to find him. I dreamed of him often.”

There is an added poignancy to this novel for me because I know that there is an autobiographical slant to it. Hisham Matar is the son of a political dissident who was opposed to the Gaddafi regime – the family lived in exile in Cairo and it was from here that Matar’s father was abducted in 1990. The family received news in 1996 that he was alive, and then nothing for many years. In 2010 Matar heard that someone had seen his father alive in 2002 in a Libyan jail.

The prose of this novel is beautifully spare, the whole is a haunting story of loss and memory, and I absolutely loved it.
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Oct 30, 2011 Rula Bilbeisi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Anatomy of a Disappearance

I really enjoyed this story. The characterization, the plot, the style, and the pace of the novel all lures you along, enchanting you with the writers calm and tender words.

It is interesting to know that the writer, Hisham Matar, lived similar conditions as Nuri, the narrator of the story. Libyan agents also kidnapped Matar’s father, who was a Libyan politician and moved to Egypt to escape the Gadafi regime. Thus, this can be viewed as a semi-autobiography in which the...more

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Jun 01, 2011 Heavensent1 rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: jennifer-s-books-bookshelf

Anatomy Of A Disappearance is the sequel to author, Hisham Matar's book 'In The Country Of Men'.

The story sets off with a twelve year old boy named Nuri, whose mother just died, leaving Nuri in the care of his maid and his distant father, who was once an high official in the Libyan government and is against the Gadhafi forces.

While on vacation, Nuri notices a beautiful woman in a yellow swim suit sitting at the side of the pool cleaning her foot, walking over to her, Nuri begins to clean her foo...more Anatomy Of A Disappearance is the sequel to author, Hisham Matar's book 'In The Country Of Men'.

The story sets off with a twelve year old boy named Nuri, whose mother just died, leaving Nuri in the care of his maid and his distant father, who was once an high official in the Libyan government and is against the Gadhafi forces.

While on vacation, Nuri notices a beautiful woman in a yellow swim suit sitting at the side of the pool cleaning her foot, walking over to her, Nuri begins to clean her foot and sets in motion a future he has no control over.

Using Nuri's adolescent enamour of her, Mona manipulates Nuri's father into marrying her. As soon as they are married, Mona sets Nuri up to come upon her while she is showering and convinces Nuri's dad to ship him off to boarding school. Against his father's wishes, he sends Nuri away.

At school, Nuri learns about himself and his family and the history that surrounds them all. Then Kamal Pasha, Nuri's dad, disappears and Nuri is left with a step-mother he doesn't like while the events of his father's past unfolds and we learn how his actions have helped to shape Nuri's future.

I found the "memoir" to be an easy read, it could be easily read in one afternoon. I didn't get the feeling that it was a memoir, more like a work of fiction about an pubescent young man and the women who help steer his life. I wasn't impressed with his stalking Mona on numerous occasions, his vying for her attention with his father was equally disturbing to read. I thought Nuri to be a rather unlikeable boy who didn't seem to have much of a backbone and perverted thoughts about the women in his life. There was no depth in Nuri's character and I couldn't find any relation to him at all.

I didn't have the opportunity to read Hisham Matar's prequel to this novel, and it may have helped with some of the back story, 'Anatomy of a Disappearance' left me with more questions than answers as I found the plot to be spasmodic and irregular, the characters apathetic and obstinate and the dialogue devoid of emotion. (less)

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May 23, 2012 Lisa (scarlet21) rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a 'different' book. It's quite easy to read and simply told but yet that seems to emphasise the poignancy of the story. It is the story of Nuri whose mother dies when he is 10, leaving him with his mysterious and distant father. On holiday 2 years later they meet Mona, a young woman who captures the hearts of both Nuri and his father - the rivalry between them for this woman's heart, albeit that Nuri is only a boy, strikes a tender cord with the reader, a sympathy that deepens when he is...more

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May 12, 2013 Siria rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 21st-century, by-poc, libyan-fiction

Nuri is 12 when his mother dies, 14 when his father is kidnapped by political opponents and probably murdered; he spends the next few years shuffling between his English boarding school and the apartment of his beautiful young step-mother, Mona, on whom he is uncomfortably fixated. I liked the prose of Anatomy of a Disappearance—there were one or two of the more lyrical lines which didn't quite work for me, but otherwise Matar's style manages to be spare while also being descriptive and suggesti...more

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Apr 06, 2013 Orsodimondo rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: inglese, araba

NESSUNO AL MONDO
Nuri, l’io narrante di questo romanzo, racconta la sua vita tra gli otto e i 25 anni.
Ma se adesso dovessi descriverlo, dire perché si comporta come si comporta, cosa sente (a parte la lapalissiana mancanza del padre), non ci riuscirei, andrei un po’ di qua e un po’ di là, farei confusione e non saprei centrare il fulcro.
Non avrei più successo con Mona, oppure provando a descrivere il grande assente, il padre.
Men che meno con la madre morta.
Forse, mi andrebbe meglio con Naima, m...more

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About Hisham Matar

Hisham Matar was born in New York City. He spent his childhood in America with his Libyan parents while his father was working for the Libyan delegation to the United Nations. When he was three years old, his family went back to Tripoli, Libya, where he spent his early childhood. Due to political persecutions by the Gaddafi regime, in 1979 his father was accused of being a reactionary to the Libya...more

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