Hisham Matar

Libya, 1979. Nine-year-old Suleiman's days are circumscribed by the narrow rituals of childhood: outings to the ruins surrounding Tripoli, games with friends played under the burning sun, exotic gifts from his father's constant business trips abroad. But his nights have come to revolve around his mother's increasingly disturbing bedside stories full of old family bitterness. And then one day Suleiman sees his father across the square of a busy marketplace, his face wrapped in a pair of dark sunglasses. Wasn't he supposed to be away on business yet again? Why is he going into that strange building with the green shutters? Why did he lie? Suleiman is soon caught up in a world he cannot hope to understand--where the sound of the telephone ringing becomes a portent of grave danger; where his mother frantically burns his father's cherished books; where a stranger full of sinister questions sits outside in a parked car all day; where his best friend's father can disappear overnight, next to be seen publicly interrogated on state television.In the Country of Men is a stunning depiction of a child confronted with the private fallout of a public nightmare. But above all, it is a debut of rare insight and literary grace.From the Hardcover edition.

Nuri is a young boy when his mother dies. It seems that nothing will fill the emptiness that her strange death leaves behind in the Cairo apartment he shares with his father. Until Mona. When Nuri first sees Mona, sitting in her bright yellow swimsuit by the pool of the Magda Marina holiday resort, the rest of the world vanishes.

"After finishing his powerful memoir The Return, Hisham Matar, seeking solace and pleasure, traveled to Siena, Italy. Always finding comfort and clarity in great art, Matar immersed himself in eight significant works from the Sienese School of painting, which flourished from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Artists whom he had admired throughout his life, such as Duccio and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, evoke earlier engagements he has had with works by Caravaggio and Poussin, and the personal experiences that surrounded those moments. Complete with gorgeous full-color reproductions of the artworks, A Month in Siena is about what occurred between Matar, those paintings, and the city. That month would be an extraordinary period in Matar's life: an exploration of how art can console and disturb in equal measure, as well as an intimate encounter with the city and its inhabitants. This is a gorgeous meditation on how centuries-old art can illuminate our own inner landscape--current relationships, long-lasting love, grief, intimacy, and solitude--and shed further light on the present world around us"--

243 pages : 21 cm

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the deaths of Shakespeare and Cervantes, six English-speaking authors and six Spanish-speaking authors have collected 12 original and previously unpublished stories as their tribute to the international influence of these two giants of world literature. An introduction by Salman Rushdie explores the legacy of the two men in contemporary fiction. Don Quixote and the ambuiguity of reading / Ben Okri -- Mir Aslam of Kolachi / Kamila Shamsie -- The dogs of war / Juan Gabriel Vásquez ; translator: Anne McLean -- Coriolanus / Yuri Herrera ; translator: Lisa Dillman -- Glass / Nell Leyshon -- Opening windows / Marcos Giralt Torrente ; translator: Samantha Schnee -- The piano bar / Hisham Matar -- The secret life of Shakespeareans / Soledad Puértolas ; translator: Rosalind Harvey -- Egyptian puppet / Vicente Molina Foix ; translator: Frank Wynne -- The glass woman / Deborah Levy -- The anthology massacre / Rhidian Brook -- Shakespeare, New Mexico / Valeria Luiselli ; translator: Christiana MacSweeney.