What an exquisite paragraph
BarbaraBB Indeed! 2y
In the Country of Men: A Novel | 
What an exquisite paragraph
pickSet in Libya in 1979, the story is told from the perspective of a 9 year old boy whose father is anti-Qaddafi and whose mother was forced to marry at 14. I love the way Matar developed Suleiman‘s character. He accepts things in the simplistic way of a child, then reacts violently and immaturely. He seeks approval from an unhealthy adult. He makes terrible choices because he doesn‘t know better. The accuracy/realism made the book for me.
so-soWell, this book was super bleak. Lyrical writing but not soothing enough to recommend. A young boy recalls the summer Gaddafi overthrew the Libyan Government and usurped power labeling & killing thousands of non supporters as traitors.
pickFirst Libyan Lit read. As a reader I loved it. Told mostly from the perspective of a 9-year-old boy but written when 24 so more fleshed out than you might expect. The more world lit I read, the more pissed I get with the fundamentalism and the patriarchy. Not “Oh good, it‘s not just my country. But it‘s f‘ed up everywhere.” Good perspective of Libyan society, though.
so-soMatar writes beautifully, here—sometimes to a fault. Told through the eyes of a 9-year-old Libyan boy in the early years of Khaddafy's reign, the novel suffers from child-narrator-syndrome: the boy couldn't possibly grasp the significance of what was befalling his family the way the narration suggests. The complex character of his mother interested me more than anything else in this rather slow-moving, Proustian take on a harrowing situation.
#QuoteOfTheDay
The passage concerns and the photo is of the ancient Roman city of Leptis Magna, in what is now Libya.
#QuoteOfTheDay
These opening paragraphs take my breath away. And the audio narrator, Khalid Abdalla, is to die for!
Still haven't read this but it looks interesting.
