Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... In the Country of Men (2006)by Hisham Matar
Best African Books (11) Middle East Fiction (15) Booker Prize (166) » 10 more BBC Radio 4 Bookclub (87) Africa (30) A Novel Cure (463) BBC World Book Club (52) Books Set In Africa (64) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Suleiman, a nine-year-old boy in Libya is ignorant of the threat brought about by the new regime of Muammar Gaddafi. He unwittingly supplies information to the secret police who are watching his home for the father they suspect of being a subversive. Matar has created an outstanding story from a difficult, brutal era in Libya, an era to which he was personally exposed. His writing is beautiful, as is apparent in the scene where the boy is feasting on mulberries, as well as the execution scene that is televised and with every minute detail noticed by the audience. This is a profound story that the reader will remember long after closing the book. First Libyan Lit read. As a reader I loved it. It is told mostly from the perspective of a 9-year-old boy but written when he was 24, so it is more fleshed out than you might expect. The more world lit I read, the more pissed I get with fundamentalism and the patriarchy. Not “Oh good, it’s not just my country.” But it’s f’ed up everywhere. Good perspective of Libyan society, though. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Libya, 1979. Nine-year-old Suleiman's days are circumscribed by the narrow rituals of childhood: outings to the ruins surrounding Tripoli, games with friends played under the burning sun, exotic gifts from his father's constant business trips abroad. But his nights have come to revolve around his mother's increasingly disturbing bedside stories full of old family bitterness. And then one day Suleiman sees his father across the square of a busy marketplace, his face wrapped in a pair of dark sunglasses. Wasn't he supposed to be away on business yet again? Why is he going into that strange building with the green shutters? Why did he lie? Suleiman is soon caught up in a world he cannot hope to understand-where the sound of the telephone ringing becomes a portent of grave danger; where his mother frantically burns his father's cherished books; where a stranger full of sinister questions sits outside in a parked car all day; where his best friend's father can disappear overnight, next to be seen publicly interrogated on state television. In the Country of Men is a stunning depiction of a child confronted with the private fallout of a public nightmare. But above all, it is a debut of rare insight and literary grace. No library descriptions found.
|
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
Increasingly, his pro-democracy father began to be absent on ‘business trips’ although Suleiman caught sight of him in town.
And Suleiman’s mother began to rely more and more on the mysterious medicine she got covertly from the pharmacy – the medicine that left her lying in bed for days at a time, and which neighbors could use as a weapon against her.
As Gaddafi cracked down on the dissident movement, it became necessary to burn all Sulieman’s father’s books.
Then a neighbor and the father of his best friend was arrested and hung publicly on state television.
Suleiman’s life would never be the same – and the one book he saved of his father’s – his father’s favorite - could become his father's undoing.
Fascinating and illuminating of the politics of the time. ( )