Tyuioooooo

Written by Hisham Matar

Format: Hardcover, 256 pages

Publisher: The Dial Press

On Sale: January 30, 2007

Price: $22.00

ISBN: 978-0-385-34042-7 (0-385-34042-7)

Also available as an eBook and a trade paperback.

TEACHER'S GUIDE

NOTE TO TEACHERS

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 вЂ?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 вЂ" and misinterpreting вЂ" 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.

While the following guide provides suggestions for addressing the historical and political elements of the novel, it also provides a means to examine the story from a variety of other viewpoints. In considering Matar’s work, readers of all backgrounds should quickly realize that, while they may not have been previously acquainted with facets of Libyan history such as the rule of the Qaddafi revolutionary regime, there is no need for apprehension. While politics and history do often