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Dial Press
April 2008
On Sale: April 3, 2008
256 pages ISBN: 0385340435 EAN: 9780385340434 Paperback
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Non-Fiction Political
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
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