Anatomy of a Disappearance

“There are times when my father’s absence is as heavy as a child sitting on my chest. Other times I can barely recall the exact features of his face and must bring out the photographs I keep in an old enveloped in the drawer of my bedside table. There has not been a day since his sudden and mysterious vanishing that I have not been searching for him, looking in the most unlikely places. everything and everyone, existence itself, has become an evocation, a possibility for resemblance. Perhaps this is what is meant by that brief and now almost archaic word: elegy.”

This is the opening paragraph of this beautiful little book.  (I had to look up the word elegy).  

It is an absorbing story and very well written.  I came to love Nuri, despise Mona, feel fondly about Naima, and miss the presence of the father.  I think this indicates that Matar had done a pretty good job of engulfing me in his novel.

I am really looking forward to reading his first book In the Country of Men which was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, and generally received a better reception than Anatomy of a Disappearance. I found this book mesmerizing so I am expecting to be blown away by his first book.