Novelist Hisham Matar confronts the existential crisis of Libyan national identity

The lecture for the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (OCLW) at Wolfson was introduced by OCLW Director and College President Hermione Lee, who recounted the thrill of discovering Matar's work while judging the 2006 ManBooker Prize, for which his debut novel In the Country of Men was shortlisted.

The book was set in Gadaffi's Libya of 1979, and brought Matar literary acclaim and international prominence, leaving the novelist with the difficult task, Professor Lee observed, of negotiating the responsibility of the artist to the claims of world history.

Matar, whose cousin was killed by Gadaffi's forces, described the struggle to preserve the territory of the writer from the political upheaval going on in Libya, only to succumb to the "urgent and compelling need to become involved in human battles", which has seen him become known around the world as one of the leading essayists and commentators on the revolution.

In revealing that his debut novel was originally conceived as a poem, Matar provided an insight into the necessary stillness of the writing process, his technique of imagining the 'quietness' of his characters, and the steps necessary to return to the state of "original enchantment" alluded to in the lecture title: 'The closest exit may be behind you'.

Matar addressed the political aspect of the writer's work, asserting the inherently problematic nature of writing for society in general. As a result, political regimes often delve into the author's life in a subconscious attempt to destroy the work, as was the case, he argued, with General de Gaulle's conversion of the writer André Malraux to a minister of state, thus 'assassinating' Malraux the writer.

Matar's response to this problematic relationship was an uncompromising belief that the novelist must at all times serve literature: "Everything depends on fidelity to literature. The engagement with the political struggle heralded a reaffirmation of my vows".

In his generous response to questions from the floor, the novelist described how the aftermath of Gaddafi's rule presents its own challenges for Libyan national identity. "Dispossession is a kind of possession", he said, "When your country is returned to you, you have to learn how to become a citizen again". This existential crisis of national identity is particularly salient for the writer, since, "there is an existential exile embedded in the life of writing. My desk is my country and my tribe are my fellow writers".

He brought to life the "razor's edge" on which he found himself during the uprising, balancing on the one hand the need to document the violations of civil rights all around, while also trying to preserve the hard-won stillness of the writer's space from the intrusions of what became more like a busy newsdesk.

For him, the aim was to guard this private space while attending to the wider reality - not for the sake of escape, but in order to avoid capture by a cause. Matar's principal concern in his art, he said, was to avoid the obvious invitation that the political situation presented to write a sweeping socio-political saga; instead, he wanted to focus on the more illuminating personal detail of how individuals are affected by living in the shadow of an authoritarian regime: "How does one touch a lover's cheek; cook a meal; listen to a piece of music?"

This intrusion of the political on personal lives was brought home by his closing observation that his work and his very name was banned in Libya under the Gaddafi regime, and that this week was the first time that his work, having been smuggled into the country, was published in a journal - a sign of the rejuvenation of civic life in Libya that bodes well for the future.

This was the final lecture of this term's Weinrebe lectures in life-writing. Next Tuesday at 5.30, the Weinrebe Fellow in Life-Writing Dr Rachel Hewitt will lead a seminar on the challenges of writing group biographies of Romantic literary figures.

Tweet