“Moments of poetic brilliance explode through the barbed wire of grief.” —Alexandros Chronides (Emerging Writer Award – State Literary Awards 2024 (CY)

“Grief, memory, belonging — Matthew Phillip Long writes about all of it with a rare eloquence that left me breathless.” — Cyprus Mail

“ […]New book set in Cyprus explores grief, memory, and the search for belonging” – Parikiaki

After the death of his mother, Matthew returns to Cyprus, the island of his birth, for the first time in thirty years. Born in Dhekelia to a British family and raised in Britain, he arrives carrying a grief he cannot contain and a longing for a home he has never truly known.

Addressing Cyprus as both witness and beloved, Matthew journeys through Larnaca, Nicosia, Fig Tree Bay, Dhekelia, Varosha, Kyrenia, and Bellapais, searching for meaning in a landscape shaped by memory, empire, partition, displacement, and ghosts. As personal bereavement becomes entwined with national history, he is forced to confront painful questions of identity, masculinity, colonial inheritance, depression, and the fragile hope of beginning again.

Haunting, poetic, and emotionally intimate, Life Goes On Without You and Me is a work of contemporary literary fiction about mourning, belonging, and the lives we try to build from what remains. It is a story of a son grieving his mother, a man searching for home, and a country that becomes both mirror and witness to his sorrow.

Life Goes On Without You and Me is a quiet, lyrical meditation on grief, memory, and belonging, exploring how the landscapes we inherit shape the lives we continue after loss.

A thoughtful and reflective work for readers drawn to intimate explorations of grief, place, and memory.

For readers of reflective literary fiction, grief memoir-inspired fiction, postcolonial writing, and novels with historical elements about Cyprus, memory, loss, and emotional survival.

Additional praise for the book

“A poetic and impassioned love letter to Cyprus, haunted by grief and inherited guilt.” —Polis Loizou

“Beautiful and heartbreaking…from the onset, a page-turner.” —Marilena Zackheos

“A haunting reflection…a desperate search for meaning in the ruins of both homeland and self.” —Nora Nadjarian

“A bold, brave, and deeply human journey in search of a meaningful life.” —Dinos Toumazos