Hisham Matar was born in New York City to Libyan parents and spent his childhood first in Tripoli and then in Cairo. His first novel, In the Country of Men , was published in 2006 and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Guardian First Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US. It won six international literary awards including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best First Book award for Europe and South Asia, the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize , and the inaugural Arab American Book Award . It has been translated into twenty-eight languages. He lives in London.

The author will be available to sign books after the reading. As always, books are available for purchase in the Museum Store.

UMMA is pleased to be the site for the Department of English Program in Creative Writing Zell Visiting Writers Series, which brings outstanding writers each semester. The Series is made possible through a generous gift from UM alumna Helen Zell (’64). For more information, please see www.lsa.umich.edu/english/grad/mfa/mfaeve.asp