In the Country of Men
by Hisham Matar
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Book Summary Information
Author: Hisham MatarEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-01-30
ISBN: 0385340427
Number of pages: 246
Publisher: The Dial Press
Book Reviews of In the Country of Men
Book Review: "Elucidating, disturbing ..... worthwhile"
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a story of reckless parenting and its consequences amidst the turbulent upheavals of a modern totalitarian state. It reveals the risks and penalties a young boy must try to overcome having to adapt to a dysfunctional family and an unyielding tyrannical society.
The novel suceeds in illuminating the realities of living under military dictatorship: the terror, threats and betrayals, the regime's ultimate demand for control and submission, its insidiousness, and, finally, the self justifications and ignoble acts of the populace. Hisham Matar cunningly offers Suleiman, an unsophisticated 9 year old as witness and reporter. In the literary tradition of such juvenile narrators, young Sulieman stands apart. The confusing irregularities within his family cause him to interact blindly in the social and political turmoil tearing at the lives of his family, their friends and cohorts. Suleiman's actions are, in turn, naive, fallible, erratic and dangerous.
His mother, twenty three year old, Bu Suleiman, has already endured years of unhappy marriage when her husband becomes involved in a small network of vainly hopeful conspirators intent upon inciting unrest within the prevailing Qadaffi Revolution. She alone anticipates their failure and the real costs attendant to her husband's vague politcal wishes. But Bu Suleiman is much less circumspect about the effects she is producing in her only son. The recognition the boy craves from his absent father and the over solicitous attention he willingly absorbs from his alcoholic mother combine to rob him of his chance for normal development. His rudderless existence makes him prey to behaviors that he, himself, doesn't recognize or understand. His personal convulsions and eccentricities cost him friendships and eventually present risks to the people he admires most.
While the revolutionary regime selects 'enemies of the state' for its show trials, the real enemies to civil life are seen to include the menial functionaries working for the regime in the Suleiman's own neighborhood. These lurkers qualify for their posts by possessing a lack of conscience or an emotional connection to any of those around them. This personal narrative details some of the causes of an incomplete development in young Suleiman that is likely akin to similar emotional scarring and bitterness to be found in the earlier lives of the book's totalitarian aparratchiks. The 9 year old protagonist is ingloriously saved from this fate by his mother whose ministrations, nevertheless, leave a deep imprint on the adult Suleiman as he retells his story to us.
This psychological theme and its political setting are successfully counterpoised to provide an effect upon readers that is both permanent and enlightening, and which forms the basis for giving the book 4 stars. This may not be a book to love, but its substance will be usefully remembered and appreciated. Matar writes well, often very well. The author's future work should be widely anticipated.
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