Like all novelists, I'm interested in the filters between reality

“Like all novelists, I’m interested in the filters between reality and the imagination.” — thus spoke Hisham Matar, the Libyan-born writer whose words, forged in exile and grief, reach beyond the personal into the universal. In this reflection, he speaks not merely as a novelist, but as a seeker of truth — one who understands that human experience is never seen directly, but always through the filters of memory, emotion, and imagination. For the novelist, as for the philosopher or the poet, reality is not a fixed landscape; it is a shifting horizon, refracted through the mind’s own light and shadow. Matar reminds us that to write — and indeed to live — is to dwell in the space between what is and what we perceive.

To understand the origin of this thought, we must look to Matar’s own life — a man whose father was kidnapped and disappeared by the Gaddafi regime, leaving behind an emptiness that no fact could fill. In the absence of certainty, the imagination became his only instrument of truth. He learned, as all true artists do, that reality is not composed solely of events, but of how those events are held in the soul. When he writes of memory, it is not as an archive but as a living, breathing organism — one that reshapes the past with each act of remembering. Thus, when Matar says he is interested in “the filters between reality and the imagination,” he speaks as a man who has lived where the boundary between truth and dream is blurred by pain, longing, and the need to understand.

In the ancient tradition of storytelling, this tension between the real and the imagined has always been sacred ground. The Homeric bards sang of gods who walked among men, of wars that were both history and myth. Yet what made their tales eternal was not their factual accuracy but their emotional truth — the way the human heart, through imagination, gave meaning to suffering and victory alike. The ancients understood that imagination is not a lie told about reality; it is the lens through which reality becomes visible to the spirit. Without it, facts remain inert, stripped of soul. Through it, even tragedy can reveal grace.

Consider, too, the story of Anne Frank, a young girl who, in her confinement, turned her journal into a vessel of imagination. Though her reality was one of fear and isolation, her words transcended it, transforming despair into insight. She filtered her world through the imagination of youth and hope, creating a truth far greater than the facts of her imprisonment. Her diary endures because it stands precisely at that juncture — between reality and imagination, between what was lived and what was dreamed. This is what Matar means: that the novelist’s task is to dwell in that intersection, to uncover the deeper truth that lies beneath the visible world.

Matar’s fascination with these “filters” is, at its heart, a meditation on perception itself. Every human being lives behind a veil of thought and emotion; no two souls see the same world. Our experiences, our wounds, our hopes — these shape how we interpret reality. The novelist does not strip away these filters; he studies them. For it is through them that we come to know what it means to be human. The imagination, therefore, is not a distortion of truth but an extension of it — the means by which we give language to what cannot be seen or measured.

But this understanding carries both power and responsibility. To use the imagination carelessly is to deceive; to use it wisely is to reveal. The novelist must walk this path with reverence, discerning what is invention and what is illumination. So too must we, in our own lives, learn to recognize our filters — the biases, fears, and desires that color our perception of the world. To be conscious of them is to move closer to truth. To ignore them is to live in illusion. As Matar suggests, the work of imagination is not to escape reality, but to interpret it more deeply, to render its invisible dimensions visible.

The lesson, then, is clear: embrace imagination not as a retreat from truth, but as its companion. When you remember, do so not only with your mind but with your heart; when you observe, allow wonder to guide your gaze. In art, as in life, truth is not found in what is merely factual, but in what resonates — what feels alive. The filters between reality and the imagination are not barriers to knowledge, but bridges. They connect the world as it is to the world as it could be, allowing us to see both more clearly.

And so, let the words of Hisham Matar remind us that the imagination is not an enemy of truth, but its interpreter. To live fully is to move between these realms — to see the real world through the lens of the imagined, and the imagined world through the discipline of the real. For in that sacred tension, between what we know and what we dream, lies the deepest understanding of all: that the truth of life is not found in certainty, but in the eternal dialogue between reality and imagination, where the human spirit forever seeks to reconcile what is seen with what is felt.