In the Country of Men

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.