num_pages: 349
description: Libya, 1979. Nine-year-old Suleiman' s days are circumscribed by the narrow rituals of 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.
language: English
title: In the Country of Men
titlecomplete: In the Country of Men (Thorndike Press Large Print Core Series)
genres: Fiction, Historical, Northern Africa, Libya, Literature, Novels, Contemporary, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Africa
ratings_count: 6539
places: Libya
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Booker Prize, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Guardian First Book Award, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Arab American Book Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Commonwealth Writers' Prize
category: Best First Book in South Asia and Europe, awardedAt: 1199174400000
name: Dublin Literary Award
publisher: Thorndike Pr