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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Book of the Week

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Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

BBC Radio 4 LW

Book of the Week: The Return

Khalid Abdalla

Hisham Matar

Anna Magnusson

Kirsteen Cameron

Book of the Week: The Return: Episode 2

The Return

Episode 2

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, The Return, Episode 2

Hisham Matar's memoir of loss and exile. A football match unites his scattered family.

Powerful memoir of hope and loss by Libyan Hisham Matar, whose activist father Jaballa was kidnapped in 1990 and made to 'disappear' by Gaddafi's regime. Read by Khalid Abdalla.

In this powerful memoir, Libyan novelist Hisham Matar describes the mix of hope and grief he has lived with in the two decades since his father, Jaballa, was kidnapped by Qaddafi's regime in 1990. Imprisoned and kept isolated from other prisoners, Jaballa managed to send only a handful of letters to his family before he disappeared without trace. To this day, no-one is sure what happened to him, although it is likely that he died in a massacre at Abu Salim prison in Tripoli in 1996.

Living in exile from his homeland since the 1970s, Hisham returned to Libya for the first time in 2012, following the revolution that brought down Qaddafi and his regime. Amongst the joy of being reunited with his extended family, many of whom had also endured long imprisonment, was the growing acceptance of his father's death and unknown fate.


Reader: Khalid Abdalla

Writer: Hisham Matar

Abridger: Anna Magnusson

Producer: Kirsteen Cameron.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Powerful memoir of hope and loss by the Booker Prize-nominated Libyan author Hisham Matar.

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