'Country of Men' Novelist Hisham Matar

Fresh Air

Published February 22, 2007 at 11:00 AM EST

Hisham Matar, photographed in October 2006 while awaiting the selection of Britain's Mann Booker Prize for fiction. He was on the short list.

Hisham Nitar's semi-autobiographical debut novel In the Country of Men was short-listed for the 2006 Mann Booker Prize.

Matar was born in New York City in 1970 to Libyan parents and spent his childhood in Tripoli, Libya, and later in Cairo, Egypt. He has lived in Great Britain since 1986.

Matar's father, a critic of the Libyan regime, was arrested in 1990. Matar has been unable to find out what happened to him.

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