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In the Country of Men
Hisham Matar
Novel, 2006
A boy's-eye view of Tripoli in 1979, showing fear, informers and family secrecy under Gaddafi's revolutionary regime.
Books set in Libya
Five books by writers from Libya, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with In the Country of Men and The Return.
About the literature of Libya
Libya's best-known writers include Hisham Matar, whose memoir The Return won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, and Ibrahim al-Koni, who writes of the Sahara and its Tuareg people. Matar writes in English, while al-Koni's novels are written in Arabic and reach English readers in translation. Colonel Gaddafi's rule, from 1969 until the 2011 uprising, hangs over much modern Libyan writing, and al-Koni's fiction draws on Tuareg oral tradition and desert myth.
Matar's In the Country of Men sees Tripoli in 1979 through a boy's eyes, with fear, informers and family secrecy. Al-Koni's Gold Dust tells of a Tuareg man and his prized camel, and Anubis: A Desert Novel is a mythic tale of a foundling raised in the desert.
By writers from Libya
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The Return
Hisham Matar
Memoir, 2016
Memoir of a return to Libya after the 2011 uprising to seek his father, a political prisoner, exploring Tripoli, Benghazi and the regime's legacy.
The Bleeding of the Stone
Ibrahim al-Koni
Novel, 1990. Translated from Arabic by May Jayyusi and Christopher Tingley
A Tuareg man guards the Sahara's wild sheep, and the novel shows desert ecology and Tuareg life threatened by modernity and hunters.
Gold Dust
Ibrahim al-Koni
Novel, 1990. Translated from Arabic
A Tuareg man and his prized camel in the Libyan Sahara, in a story of nomadic honor, loyalty and loss.
Anubis: A Desert Novel
Ibrahim al-Koni
Novel, 2002. Translated from Arabic
Mythic Saharan tale of a foundling raised in the desert, drawing on Tuareg beliefs, oral tradition and the harshness of the land.
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