this is Hisham Matar's first novel... written well, but could have been better, considering the fact that it had been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
living in an Arab country and working with Arabs gives a distinct edge while reading Arab authors since it makes the task of understanding the way they use language and clears a lot of cloud on their thinking process... this thought stayed with me as i turned page after page of Matar's book...
the story is one of Suleiman, a nine-year-old boy who, as the protagonist is trying to make sense of the adult world around him... his parents' world, where the mother gives in to secret drinking binges, when the father is away 'on business'...
this is woven in and around with Slooma (Suleiman's nick name) friends, Kareem, the son of Ustath Rashid, who is publicly executed, for opposing the regime in power in Libya in 1979. the execution forces Slooma's mother to go and beg with a neighbour to help release her husband who is also part of the same political group...
till this story segment, the narration is detailed...
when Slooma is sent off to Cairo by his parents to help him carve out a life of better possibilities, it seemed that Matar is in a hurry to end the book... the detailed narration becomes sketchy... and somehow ends, with a touching reunion between mother and son in Cairo...
the imagery if powerful, the story is good, but narration falls short at the end...
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