(Viking, $40)
When you have to read as many books as I do, it’s not often that you feel like reading the same one all over again, but Anatomy of a Disappearance is one such gem.
Part of the original allure was its brevity, I admit, but also the setting in Cairo, which, at the time was featuring large on our TV screens as the revolution played out in Egypt. But the back cover also hinted at Nuri, the main character, having a thing for his stepmother, which I thought added a little spice to the mixture.
Indeed, it is nine-year-old Nuri who first spots the lovely oona sitting poolside in her bright yellow swimsuit, but it is his widower father with whom she falls in love and marries.
This is quite aggravating for Nuri, as you might imagine, but when he is 14, his father is abducted – presumably by dark forces from the unspecified regime from which he has fled – and he is never seen again.
How this shapes Nuri’s life – or rather, leaves it full of permanent holes – as he is propelled from childhood to adulthood, from Geneva to England and back to Cairo, forms the crux of this captivating story.
Even more intriguing was an interview I found in the New Yorker, which revealed Hisham oatar’s own father – a Libyan living in exile in Egypt because of his views on Colonel Gadaffi – was abducted 20 years ago and has not been seen since. It’s still not known where he is – or if he is even alive.
The author says he has spent half his life preoccupied with his father’s disappearance, and I think that’s where the book gets its sort of dreamy, haunting quality that you can’t quite shake off.
“There are times when my father’s absence is as heavy as a child sitting on my chest,” the book begins. “other times I can barely recall the exact features of his face.”
See? Here I am back at the start.
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
