Matar's 'In the Country of Men' (2006)

"Can you become a man, without becoming your father?"

In the Country of Men is a vivid, intimate portrait of one blazing summer in Libya under a cruel dictatorship through the immature eyes of nine-year-old Suleiman. Suleiman is on his summer break. He misses his father who is often away on business. He feels protective of his mother when they go to the market in the midst of men, when she becomes 'sick' with alcohol. Through his mother's whispered stories before he sleeps, he slowly learns to take responsibility for the caged existence his mother leads - first under his grandfather and uncles, and now in the absence of his father. When, on an alleged business trip, his father appears at a window on the market square, his childhood starts to rupture.

Awash with images of a sizzling Tripoli where neighbour turn against neighbour, the horrors of al-Gaddafi's tyranny are played out against the routines of home life. Set against the abrupt kidnappings and televised torture are afternoons spent with neighbouring children on the dusty streets, swims in the Mediterranean, picking mulberries - the 'fruit of the angels'. As the disappearance of his father and the appearance of strange men slowly rent apart the innocence of childhood, Suleiman begins to lash out at his increasingly aloof mother. From his eyes, we see a woman struggling in the order of a man's world. It's a complex portrait of a caged and limited existence. The boundaries of a woman's existence are those of the home, the limits of Suleiman's knowledge a smaller cage within it. Matar casts a tale that reads as an secret dream that threatens to morph into a nightmare. It is an essential, compelling read about the ties and duty of family.

Would recommend if you enjoyed: Hosseini's The Kite Runner.