Photo by Diana Matar

Copies of the book were sent to more than 5,000 new undergraduate and postgraduate students to read before commencing their studies in September.

The novel, which deals with a nine-year-old’s rites of passage, has been published in 28 languages, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2006.

Aimed at encouraging students to read contemporary fiction, Tuesday’s event is part of an International initiative supported by the Booker Prize Foundation.

The project fostered reading groups and feedback events across campus, culminating in this special evening with the author himself.

Set in Tripoli, Libya, in the summer of 1979, In the Country of Men is told from the point of view of a young boy growing up in frightening and bewildering times. After his father and a close family friend disappear, the secrets and lies become so intense they threaten to overwhelm the child, struggling to preserve the world around him.

Hisham Matar was born in New York in November 1970 and spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo before moving back to Britain. He studied architecture at Goldsmith’s College and has lived in London since 1986. His new novel The Anatomy of a Disappearance will be published by Viking in March 2011.

Hisham Matar will read from and discuss In The Country of Men with Prof Chris Bigsby, from the School of American Studies, on December 7 at 6.30pm in the Thomas Paine Study Centre Lecture Theatre at UEA.

The event is free and all are welcome, but interest should be registered in advance by emailing literaryevents@uea.ac.uk.