Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #242674 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-30
• Released on: 2007-01-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, Matar's debut novel tracks the effects of Libyan strongman Khadafy's 1969 September revolution on the el-Dawani family, as seen by nine-year-old Suleiman, who narrates as an adult. Living in Tripoli 10 years after the revolution with his parents and spending lazy summer days with his best friend, Kareem, Suleiman has his world turned upside down when the secret police–like Revolutionary Committee puts the family in its sights—though Suleiman does not know it, his father has spoken against the regime and is a clandestine agitator—along with families in the neighborhood. When Kareem's father is arrested as a traitor, Suleiman's own father appears to be next. The ensuing brutality resonates beyond the bloody events themselves to a brutalizing of heart and mind for all concerned. Matar renders it brilliantly, as well as zeroing in on the regime's reign of terror itself: mock trials, televised executions, neighbors informing on friends, persecution mania in those remaining. By the end, Suleiman's father must either renounce the cause or die for it, and Suleiman faces the aftermath of conflicts (including one with Kareem) that have left no one untouched. Suleiman's bewilderment speaks volumes. Matar wrests beauty from searing dread and loss. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School—This is the story of the impact of small revolutions, not on the men and women who participate in the upheavals, but on the children who barely understand the world in which they find themselves. Suleiman is a nine-year-old in Qaddafi's Libya, proud of his country and his father, and worried about his mother's "illness." He is unprepared to understand the danger his father, a believer in democracy, is in, or the role that he, just a child, must play to protect his family. What is most disturbing is that he must play the games of adults, but without knowing the rules. There is no heroism here, only fear, betrayal, and mistrust. This is a difficult book: the characters are fatally flawed, the plot revels in the gray area of a child's memories and immature perceptions, and in the end there is little redemption. The plot unfolds credibly through the boy's eyes, and it is readers who shed light on the secrets. There is no judgment, and yet there is a heavy patina of guilt in the narrative. Well written, with evocative descriptions of heat and landscape that intensify readers' experience, the story lingers long after the book is closed. Teens serious about understanding the complex nature of patriotism will find much to ponder here.—Mary Ann Harlan, Arcata High School, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
Reviewed by Ron Charles

Behind reports of dissidents intimidated, tortured and killed by the world's repressive regimes hide the subtler, more obscure stories of their young children. They experience a world overcast by two shadows: parents trying to shield them from alarm and Orwellian governments denying that anything is amiss. Writing from his current home in London, Libyan author Hisham Matar has captured this plight in his first novel, a haunting, poetic story about a 9-year-old boy struggling to comprehend what's happening to his family in the vise of Col. Moammar Gaddafi's reign of terror. In the Country of Men, which was shortlisted for last year's Man Booker Prize, includes frightening glimpses of the dictatorship's abuses and Libya's brand of Islamic puritanism, but Matar focuses primarily on the psychological damage wreaked on his young narrator.

In 1979, Suleiman is an only child enjoying summer vacation in the usual ways of children everywhere: swimming, climbing trees, playing with his friends in the streets. But a deep anxiety pervades his home in Tripoli. A man is parked outside in a car "like a giant dead moth in the sun." His father, a successful businessman, is tense and distant. The adults who drop by sound happy until Suleiman steps out of the room; then they fall into panicked whispers. His mother grows increasingly dependent on her secret "medicine." A model of matronly care and concern during the day, she burdens her son at night with tales of her forced marriage at the age of 14, the sexual humiliations she endured, the dreams she relinquished.

Matar writes in a voice that shifts gracefully between the adult exile looking back and the young boy experiencing these events through his limited, confused point of view. Why are they burning father's books and papers? Who is that voice breaking into the phone calls? Why has another boy's father "vanished like a grain of salt in water"?

"I couldn't wait to be a man," little Suleiman thinks, "heavy with the world," but what does it mean to become a man in a country where men are either brutal or cowed? Powerless to save his family from threats he can't begin to understand, Suleiman falls into bouts of sullenness and anger, committing acts of betrayal that immediately sting him with shame.

Looking back at this "time of blood and tears, in a Libya full of bruise-checkered and urine-stained men," he realizes that his childhood left a "lasting impression on me, one that has survived well into my adulthood, a kind of quiet panic." Though set in one of the world's most peculiar, most despotic countries, this sad, beautiful novel captures the universal tragedy of children caught in their parents' terrors.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

Fabulous debut effort by Hisham Matar - a work to treasure
I learned about Hisham Matar's debut work "In the Country of Men" from an occasional piece that the Financial Times does called "Read Your Way Around the World." In the list the FT published in 2006, a one- to two-line description of Matar's book reeled me in. How often does one get to read a semi-autobiographical piece about growing up Libya? Since it wasn't available yet in the US, I ordered it straight away from Amazon UK.

It's not often I can say that I 'treasured' a reading experience. But that was the case with Matar's book. It was worth every penny of extra shipping to have the book in my hands right away.

I can't do the work justice here. Seen through a young child's eyes, it depicts life under the initial days of Muammar Gaddafi's 'Great Revolution.' Gaddafi himself is an off-stage presence in the book - never named, he is referred to others simply as 'The Guide' (he's known officially as 'Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution'). The majority of the action takes place in a single neighborhood. The reader sees how the revolution affects the fabric of Tripoli society. It's expertly and almost delicately told.

It's hard to believe Matar is a debut novelist. 'In the Country of Men' is a work to treasure.

1984 on the Mediterranean

I heard about this book from an interview of Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air with the author Hisham Mater. In the interview Mater talked of his own life experience as a boy watching interrogations on Libyan TV and the eventual detention of his father and the exile of the family first to Egypt then England. The author came across as a very thoughtful and articulate, his description of his experience as a child coming so close to the horrors of torture clearly left its mark on him.

In the Country of Men, belongs to the semi fiction genre, it is based on real events witnessed first hand by the author but clearly the author let his very creative talents take over and weave a number of other interesting patterns on the same basic setting of Libyan social and political life in the Seventies.

Hot Mediterranean summer days, lots of white sand and the beautiful blue Mediterranean, a nine year only child living with a mother suffering from depression and alcoholism trying to make the most of a bad marriage. A father, who is somewhat remote and a bit caricature like is a businessman turned activist obsessed with making Libya a better place. Libya is very much right out of 1984 with much of the horrors, brain washing and denials and a great "Guide" too.

Mater's developed his own child character and that of his mother's superbly into complete multi dimensional human beings. The cruelty and contradictions in the child were masterfully portrayed. Also his sense of place and time is remarkable, Mater makes you virtually taste the beautiful delicious mulberries or sense the heat burning your feet from walking in the hot afternoons to the Tripoli beach.

The disappointing parts of the book were just two aspects; the limited development of the character of the father who was clearly central to the story. While it may have been Mater's intention to paint a picture from the eyes of a 9 year old and as a result a sketchy picture of the father may have been appropriate, this somehow jarred with me as the narrative was that of a more mature adult reflecting back on childhood days. This maturity came across in many ways but fell short when discussing the father. The second disappointing aspect of the book was the relationship with Karim, the childhood friend. Mater was brilliant in the way he dealt with the Karim relationship throughout the book but somehow appear to have felt compelled to tidy things up for a semi happy ending.

The interview with Terry Gross, revealed the true experience of Mater's life and the real life ending was far worse than the one he offered. Perhaps this would explain Mater's need to retain a distance from his father, even in a work of semi fiction and the relatively rushed ending of the book.

I strongly recommend this book as another beautifully written work in English with a strong Arab Mediterranean sensibility.

A Novel That Will Stay With You
A stunning debut novel with depth of voice and exquisite writing. Matar renders the effects of life under oppression upon children, families and society with nuance, skill and emotion. He is second to none in writing adult memories from a confused child's perspective. I lived in Iran under the Savak .. Matar gets it right. Most highly recommended. He does what fiction does best .. puts you in the middle of the lives of others.