Review
Labeled by some as the "Libyan
Kite Runner",
In The Country of Men does share some similarities with
Khaled Hosseini's runaway bestseller in that both are about
young boys growing up in countries experiencing political
implosion, with the result that their boy-sized mistakes take on
adult-sized consequences; but Matar's prose is leaner than
Hosseini's, and his themes share more with Ian McEwan's
Atonement than with
The Kite Runner. Matar's writing
is arrestingly evocative, blending raw emotion with tiny,
seemingly incongruous details seen through the eyes of a child,
details that serve to fill the adult reader, who can interpret
what the child sees in the wider context, with fear as he or she
picks up the traces of impending doom lurking behind the...
Beyond the Book
A Short History of Libya
Libya is located on the
Mediterranean coast in the North of
Africa to the West of Egypt (map).
Much of the country lies within the
Sahara Desert but the coastal areas have
a Mediterranean climate with arable land
in the plateaus. The earliest known
settlers of the area were the Berber
people, known as Libyans to the Greeks.
Around the 7th century BC the maritime
culture known as Phoenicians or
Canaanites colonized the eastern section
of the country which they called
Cyrenaica; and the Greeks colonized the
west, which they called...
