As of March 10, 2026, public perception of Hisham Matar's 2024 novel "My Friends" is overwhelmingly positive, largely due to its recent win of the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the Orwell Prize. Readers and critics alike praise its meditative prose, sensitive exploration of friendship, family, and exile, and its eloquent depiction of the complexities surrounding the Arab Spring, with many calling it a "great novel of exile.