2007 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

2006 Man Booker Prize Shortlist

On a white-hot day in Tripoli, Libya, in the summer of 1979, nine-year-old Suleiman is shopping in the market square with his mother. His father is away on business except that he is sure that he has just seen him, standing across the street in a pair of dark glasses. But why isn't he waving? And why doesn't he come home when he knows Suleiman's mother is falling apart?

In the Country of Men is the story of a young boy growing up in a terrifying and bewildering world where his best friend's father disappears and is next seen on state television at a public execution; where a mysterious man sits outside the house all day and asks strange questions; where his mother burns all their books when it seems his father has finally disappeared for good.

Soon the whispers and fears, secrets and lies will become so intense that Suleiman can bear them no longer, and, in his terrified effort to save his family, he may end up betraying his friends, his parents and ultimately himself

"A master of mood and feeling...The final chapter of this beautifully rendered novel is a string quartet of emotions...Matar tells his tale in a prose that is perfectly lean." - The Scotsman

 
WINNER 2007 - New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year
NOMINEE 2008 - National Book Critics Circle Awards
WINNER 2007 - Library Journal Best Books of the Year
WINNER 2007 - Commonwealth Writers' Prize of Europe and South Asia

 
Hisham Matar was born in 1970 in New York City to Libyan parents and spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo. He lives in London and is currently work on his second novel.