In the Country of Men

244 pp. Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men is a strikingly balanced novel. While set within the complicated and highly charged political landscape of Libya in the late '70s (the setting of the author's own early childhood), the story's narrator is a young boy still preoccupied with games, just beginning to open his eyes to the possibility of love, still considering - and misinterpreting - what it means to be a man. By constructing the story around this strange interplay of innocence and corruption, the author is able to open up a dialogue about duality, addressing both the light and dark elements of humanity and exploring an impressive range of themes such as freedom and identity, justice and injustice, loyalty and betrayal, exile and identity, addiction and the nature of truth.