Hisham Matar: “I learned English by listening to Jane Austen audiobooks” | Hisham MatarHisham Matar

my first reading memory
From the time I could remember, even before I could read, I mostly had the same book, Arabian Nights, read to me, and I felt the echoes of Shahrazad’s writings in my mother’s lap. , I suspected that this would be the case. The story is about deferring death, and after she asks a would-be murderer, “Can I ask permission to talk?”, the world becomes a little less certain.

The book that changed me as a teenager
When I was 13 years old, I read “Rain Song” by Badr Shakir Al Sayyab. I can’t say I understood it, but those poems tore the veil. The experience of being overwhelmed by language and trapped by lines that are out of reach taught me that literature can be both a translation of experience and an expression of it.

The book that made me want to become a writer
I read The Sun Also Rises when I was in my mid-twenties and still unsteady. One of Hemingway’s talents is to make it look easy. But then you realize how flowery, light and whole his short, bare sentences are. He did everything to open himself up, which left him exposed and nowhere to hide. He was probably worried about it, which is why he kept talking endlessly about this ship.

Returned book or author
When I was 11 years old, I learned English by listening to Jane Austen audiobooks for two and a half hours every morning for six months. I placed the book in front of me and followed it with my eyes. I underlined countless words. I often lost my place and almost drowned. There were times when the fog cleared. I didn’t look at her books again until a decade and a half later, when I read Persuasion and felt like I was back with a tutor who seemed even younger than I remembered.

book I reread
Lampedusa, author of The Leopard, said he never left home without a Shakespeare book. Every time he came across something ugly, he would reach for it and read a few lines. I have a similar relationship with Proust. It is not only a cure for ugliness, but also an antidote to the emptiness that sometimes opens up within us and makes us crave beauty and undivided attention.

A book I could never read again
The Life of the Sahaba, by the now little-known Indian theologian Muhammad Yusuf Khandrawi, provides short biographies of the Prophet Muhammad’s companions. Each small portrait has its own unique details, but by the end you realize that you were standing in the middle of a much grander gallery of friends. I don’t know how to read it now.

the book i’m reading now
“Inland” by Gerald Murnen. Every time a new piece comes out, I think, “But does he have anything more to say?” and each time I’m fascinated by it. Yesterday I stood in a long line at the airport, but the time passed quickly. I’ve only read a few pages, but I’m already impressed by his writing. He writes very well about proximity and distance.

read my consolation
If by consolation you mean beauty and ideas, poetry and inspiration, a state of being made to feel more, a state of being made to think more, and a state of being entertained, I find all these things in Joseph Conrad. . I recently reread “Victory,” and it was wonderfully comforting.

My Friends by Hisham Matar is published by Viking. To support the Guardian and Observer, purchase a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Shipping charges may apply.