In Thuwwar Libya al-Sabirun (2011, Libya's Patient Revolutionaries), published at the dawn of the Libyan uprising, Muhammad al-Asfar evokes, in exuberant terms, how ‘The Libyan people are now brothers of mankind. We can speak freely to those in the Arab world and elsewhere whom we have longed to meet, and can embrace them without fear.’ A precipitous, joyful response to escalating popular protest, al-Asfar's words convey many of the themes, of stasis, patience, estrangement and longing, that distinguish the Libyan novel's creaturely poetics, in its attentiveness to shared vulnerability and expression of fragile affiliations. For al-Asfar, becoming ‘brothers of mankind’ represents a newfound ability to tell stories and to embrace, long confined to the margins, but tantalisingly proffered by sudden, feverish transformations.

Protests first erupted in Benghazi amid the wider events of the Arab Spring in February 2011. Catalysed by the 17th February ‘Day of Rage’ (yawm al-ghaḍab), commemorating the killing of protesters by security services in 2006, they spread rapidly across the country and soon turned to clashes and outright combat. Within a week, rebel forces had claimed much of the east of the country and begun making incursions into the west. A new dawn of rights and solidarity suddenly seemed possible. The government, however, reacted with predictable brutality. Indiscriminately, loyalist forces fired on congregated groups, armed or unarmed, while, in March, the government geared up to retake Benghazi from the new National Transitional Council (al-Majlis al-Waṭanī al-Intiqālī), prompting the beginning of NATO airstrikes on 19th March. Months of fighting ensued, as bastions of the regime crumbled, culminating, on 19th October, with the capture and killing of al-Qadhafi in Sirte. As prisons were opened, relatives reunited, and ‘stray dogs’ welcomed home, Libya’s liberation seemed complete.