In the Country of Men
is a remarkable book in many ways: the first Libyan novel written in English, a debut book that took 5 years to complete and was then nominated for the Booker Prize, and a publishing success that provided a rare glimpse of a country and people long overshadowed by the 'Brother Leader of the Revolution' and his taste for the bizarre. It is a technical achievement, 250 pages of terror depicted almost exclusively through the eyes of a child, maintaining an even tone and the same obsession with detail whether describing meals or televised hangings.
is a remarkable book in many ways: the first Libyan novel written in English, a debut book that took 5 years to complete and was then nominated for the Booker Prize, and a publishing success that provided a rare glimpse of a country and people long overshadowed by the 'Brother Leader of the Revolution' and his taste for the bizarre. It is a technical achievement, 250 pages of terror depicted almost exclusively through the eyes of a child, maintaining an even tone and the same obsession with detail whether describing meals or televised hangings.A strongly autobiographical novel not in terms of events and characters but emotion, it draws on Hisham Matar's own traumatic experience growing up with Gaddafi agents spying on his exiled father, then kidnapping him and leaving his family guessing whether he is alive or dead for over 20 years. Yet the 9-year-old first person narrator Suleiman is no alter-ego and his thoughtless cruelty and small acts of betrayal have a devastating impact in Libyan 'state of the masses'. The choice of an unsympathetic narrator makes this fiction, not a political polemic in favour of a worthy cause. As Matar comments in 1:22:10 of the video below, he had to resist ''the temptation to expose the awfulness, the sheer absurdity and vileness of the Libyan dictatorship more nakedly'' because his personal and family suffering must not turn his art into ''a catalogue of their crimes''.
However what is most remarkable about In the Country of Men is what Lisa Anderson
testifies to at 14:30 of the video below, she says the novel ''is exactly like'' the late 1970s Tripoli neighbourhood she lived in. Specifics of time and place in Libyan Arabic literature have been a relative rarity during the 4 decades of the Gaddafi regime. The only prominent Libyan novelists, Ibrahim Koni
and Ahmad Fagih, accepted financial support from the regime, praised the Leader's literary brilliance and organised conferences on Gaddafi's ravings (a similar price was extracted from almost anyone who achieved anything in Libya). Independent writers were safer writing abstract short stories or personal vignettes rather than developing the social realism pioneered by Ali Mustafa Misrati and other writers of the 1950s and 1960s.
is what Lisa Anderson testifies to at 14:30 of the video below, she says the novel ''is exactly like'' the late 1970s Tripoli neighbourhood she lived in. Specifics of time and place in Libyan Arabic literature have been a relative rarity during the 4 decades of the Gaddafi regime. The only prominent Libyan novelists, Ibrahim Koni and Ahmad Fagih, accepted financial support from the regime, praised the Leader's literary brilliance and organised conferences on Gaddafi's ravings (a similar price was extracted from almost anyone who achieved anything in Libya). Independent writers were safer writing abstract short stories or personal vignettes rather than developing the social realism pioneered by Ali Mustafa Misrati and other writers of the 1950s and 1960s.Hisham Matar on the other hand writes about contemporary Libya grappling not just with political and social oppression, but on a more basic level simply by describing Tripoli's districts and streets, casually mentioning Martyrs' Square (now back to that original name) or that Egyptian cotton was the typical material for curtains in 1970s Libyan homes. He registers the effect of the April 7 student hangings on social relations: with a husband who is a dissident intellectual Suleiman's mother no longer receives lunch invitations, her friends don't come to her parties and her relatives and in-laws stop visiting.
Hisham Matar reading from In the Country of Men
1 hour 10 minutes into the video
Below is an excerpt typed up from my much read copy of In the Country of Men, a scene of a familiar everyday life which is unusual enough to savour when I come across it even in Arabic language Libyan literature. Suleiman, his Mother and Moosa (an Egyptian family friend) breakfast on dishes of tuna, harissa and olives served on a tray in the floor and eaten with bread as the only utensil:
Mama came in carrying a large tray, which Moosa bounced up and took from her and then placed on the floor. The three of us sat around the food in the center of the room and ate. The bread was hot, and when I tore it, steam billowed out in small clouds. The tea felt good going down my throat, warming my chest.
''Now, Suleiman,'' Mama said, ''you must be careful of the sun. It's OK in the garden, under the trees, but on the naked roof it can kill you, habibi.''
My mouth was full so I nodded.
Moosa broke a big piece of bread, held it in between three fingers and scooped up a chunk of tuna; he then dipped it harissa and, before a drop could fall, threw it all into his mouth. He too nodded at what Mama had said then sipped noisily at his tea. ''The sun!'' he finally said ''Oh, the sun, my boy, could kill you.''
His head swayed with his words and his finger pointed toward the sky, and his finger, made red by the harissa, pointed toward the sky, and his big eyes stuck on me like two magnets until I could do nothing but look back into them. He suddenly picked up the small plate of olives and offered it to me. I took one. The doorbell rang. It was like a small explosion that silenced everything. p 58-59
Of course this brief moment of peace and normality is interrupted by a frightening visit from the ''Revolutionary Committee man'' who had followed Suleiman and his mother from Martyrs' Square the previous day, a man who Suleiman had seen beat Ustadh Rashid and knew was responsible for making his neighbour ''vanish like a grain of salt in water'' among the overlapping political prisons and security services of the Gaddafi regime.
this brief moment of peace and normality is interrupted by a frightening visit from the ''Revolutionary Committee man'' who had followed Suleiman and his mother from Martyrs' Square the previous day, a man who Suleiman had seen beat Ustadh Rashid and knew was responsible for making his neighbour ''vanish like a grain of salt in water'' among the overlapping political prisons and security services of the Gaddafi regime.