You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today has written extensively about a country that, in the literal sense, he left behind when he was nine years old.

Hisham Matar is Libyan. His father, Jabala Matar, was a distinguished Libyan soldier, diplomat and businessman, who left his homeland to live in Egypt when he could no longer tolerate the dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi.

From exile, Jabala was a significant player in the anti-Gaddafi resistance, so much so that

Libyan intelligence, working with the Egyptians, kidnapped him on the streets of Cairo and

ghosted him back to prison in Tripoli. That was in 1990.

Hisham never saw his father again. In his novels and his memoir of his father, The Return,

Hisham has reflected at length on the impact of his father's disappearance and presumed death

at the hands of Gaddafi.

His quest for the truth brought him face to face with Gaddafi's son, Safe al-Islam.

It also forced him to think hard about the meaning of exile from a nation

which rose up against Gaddafi but remains mired in violent conflict.

Three decades after his father disappeared,

do all those cliches about moving on have any real meaning?

Well, Hisham Matar joins me now.

Welcome to Hardtall.

Thank you.

You have written extensively about the impact of your father's disappearance on yourself, both in terms

of novel, memoir. And I just wonder now, years on, whether you have found peace. I think what

I'm interested in is what every writer is interested in, is taking an experience that has initiated you

into certain themes, certain experiences and ideas, and making something of it, exploring it.

...