Hisham Matar Wins Top Literary Prize

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On March 20, the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) announced that My Friends, by author and Barnard professor Hisham Matar, took home the National Book Critics Circle Prize for fiction. 

Upon accepting the award, Matar said, “That word, ‘circle,’ is actually quite significant to me today, because I feel I am very much in a circle with all the writers, those nominated with me, with whom I share this prize,” he added. “Books are not in a race.”

Matar, who is a professor of professional practice in English and Asian and Middle Eastern cultures, published the critically acclaimed book last February. The novel, set in London, chronicles the friendship of three Libyan men as they experience life-changing events that test their bonds and identities, forcing them to choose between a life abroad or a return to their homeland.

Described as “a masterly literary meditation” by The New York Times, Matar’s novel received several awards and honors, including the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and a nomination for his second Booker Prize (In the Country of Menwas recognized in 2006). 

The praise for the book was swift, but bringing it to fruition was not. In an interview with Barnes & Noble last year, Matar said the book “emerged very, very slowly. I thought the first time that I had thought of the idea was in 2011 with the Arab Spring.” Years later, however, as he was sifting through papers for an upcoming event, he found an envelope. “[It] was from when we lived in Paris in 2003, and on the back of the envelope there’s an idea for a book,” Matar continued. “It’s just a couple of lines, and it’s basically this book about male friendship.”

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Danticat, who is a two-time NBCC Award winner, was named a finalist in January for her lauded collection of essays, We’re Alone, released last fall. Formatted with personal narratives and reports, the book explores themes around the environment, colonialism, motherhood, and resilience. Danticat takes readers on a journey from her childhood through the traumas of the COVID-19 pandemic and Haiti’s recent political events, while also paying homage to her literary icons — James Baldwin, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Márquez, and Toni Morrison, to name a few. NPR.org, Publishers Weekly, and Electric Literature named We’re Alone the “best book of 2024,” while the Washington Post called her writing “both distinctive and communal.”

“It feels good when people understand a book like this. It is an intimate book; it is a smaller book,” Danticat told Barnard Magazine in an interview in the Winter 2025 issue. “I published my first book, Breath, Eyes, Memory, when I was 25. So I’ve been at this for 30 years. And what I’m realizing more and more is that books gradually find their readers. You know, they gradually find the people they are meant to find.”

Danticat, the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Columbia, returned to Barnard’s campus this February as the 2025 Lewis-Ezekoye Distinguished Lecture in Africana Studies keynote speaker to honor her fellow alumna and author Zora Neale Hurston (Class of 1928). The event officially launched the College’s Zora Neale Hurston Centennial celebration at Barnard.