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Loading... In the Country of Menby Hisham Matar
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  bedfordbookworms | Aug 28, 2009 |  Good one. Describing Libyan oppression through eyes of a child. Great narrative (  ) manupaulose | Aug 23, 2009 | This is the story of 9-year-old Suleiman, growing up in late 1970's Libya. He doesn't understand whats going on in the grown-up world around him -- even after his best friend's father is arrested and interrogated on TV, Suleiman cooperates with the government man who has come asking questions about his own father. Troubled by his mother's "illness" (alcoholism) and desparate for his often-absent father's affection, Suleiman does many things without thinking, usually not for the best. This is a thought provoking look at a world where children grow up watching interrogations and executions of television. It compares favorably with "The Kite Runner", although it is much shorter and less complex. Review by Ms. DuVall MHSLibrary | Jul 15, 2009 |  books4micks | Jul 13, 2009 | There's a lot to like in this starkly vivid and too close to real novel about Libya circa 1979. The imagery in the first few paragraphs of the blindly white sunlight and the turquoise ocean in Tripoli is memorable in itself. The author, Hisham Matar, is Libyan, but was born in New York, the son of a diplomat. His father later fled Libya to Egypt as a political dissident. But, in ~1990 he disappeared - apparently captured by Egyptian secret police and sent to a Libyan prison. Here Matar writes about a political dissident during a crackdown in 1979 and his much younger wife, a mother at 15 - from the point-of-view of their 9-year old son. Matar's narrator is infused with early adolescent confusion; and, his complex reaction to his parents, whom he loves to the point that he almost innocently picks them apart exposing their flaws, is the main theme on the surface of the book. I enjoyed this, but perhaps not as much as I should have. The imagery is beautiful, but the awkwardness of the 9-yr-old was a little challenging for me. Perhaps as the smoke clears and I see through the narrator I will have a stronger reaction to this book. ( ) dchaikin | Jun 25, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0385340427, Hardcover)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. (retrieved from Amazon Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:58:49 -0500) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
Pros: a look inside a culture in turmoil
Cons: Violence and alcoholism are main themes in this book (