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In the Country of Men
Suleiman, a 24-year-old Libyan in exile in Egypt, tells us this story. Through his eyes, you are drawn back to the troubled events that unfolded in Tripoli in the summer of 1979. It was a time of protests of all sorts: political, student, with dissent spilling on the streets. Suleiman shares his life with his unhappy mother, while his father travels around the world to keep his business going. That is what he believes till he comes across his father at the city square. Then the secret police comes after them and the narrator, later, learns his father is one of underground liberals. He also has to deal with his mother’s illness, something that revolves around drinking something she buys secretly from the baker. Not once, does Suleiman’s love for his mother falter and Matar pens it evocatively: With prose like that, what’s not to like about The Country of Men. There are times when fiction seems to mirror fact. Among other things, there are brutal executions, killings, unanswered questions, disappearances and friendships lost. The descriptions are chilling and while the author maintains that the main events are fictional, some of the gnawing details make it seem all too real. Matar’s family was forced to flee Tripoli for Cairo in 1979 due to his diplomat father’s politics. That’s just one of the many reasons you would want to treasure this debut that took Matar five long years to finish.
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A review in The Statesman
about Hisham Matar’s In The Country of Men had this to say: "Who
would publish a book about the troubles of a Libyan child when, in the eyes of
the western media, the whole country is reduced to the delusions of Gaddafi."
Obviously, Viking wasn’t taking this too seriously, because they did and the
book has emerged one of the hottest this year. In the book trade, it is being
referred to as the Libyan Kite Runner. Like The Kite Runner, this
is a book that plays in your head, long after you have flipped the last page.