• Fiction. By Hisham Matar. Dial Press, $22.Grade: B+

Plot in a nutshell: Deservedly short-listed for The Man Booker Prize, In the Country of Men explores life in Libya shortly after Qaddafi's Revolution through the nuanced observations of a young boy whose childhood is shattered by this new reality.

In the summer of 1979, 9-year-old Suleiman gradually becomes aware of the terrifying political chaos that Qaddafi - or "the Guide," as he is referred to - has imposed on his country. Joining his mother on their weekly trip to the market, he sees his father disappear into a building when he's supposed to be away on a business trip. Haunted by his father's indifference, the young boy begins to question the life he has always taken for granted.

When members of the Revolutionary Committee drag his best friend's father away and interrogate him on state television, Suleiman's world begins to disintegrate. Anxious to distance himself from the family's dangerous political resistance, he joins the neighborhood boys in ridiculing Kareem and is initiated into the necessity and agony of betrayal as a means to survive.

As Suleiman struggles with his father's extended absence, he oscillates between defiant courage and humble submission. All the while, the dangerous truth of his father's secret life disrupts their domestic security. Suleiman increasingly serves as his mother's confidante as she turns to her "medicine" - her coy label for the alcohol she drinks for solace.

Sample of prose: Reflecting on his mother's desperate attempt to curry favor with the wife of a government official to save her family, Suleiman confesses, "Whenever I am faced with someone who holds the strings of my fate - an immigration officer, a professor - I can feel the distant reverberations from that day, inauguration into the dark art of submission. Perhaps this is why I often find a shameful pleasure in submitting to authority."

Pros: Matar's cultivation of Suleiman's moody pre-adolescence serves as an exquisite device to explore the psychological dimensions of Libya's political upheavals.

Cons: The novel's ending and abrupt solution disappoints after experiencing such sophisticated story-telling.

Final word: Matar conjures the now-familiar reality of life in a totalitarian regime, but does so with such lyrical intensity that its intricate textures surprise with their fresh insight.