Form a Circle

The National Book Critics Circle has announced the nominees for its yearly prizes. The list is rather too long to cite in full (see it here), but I'll draw your attention to one of the fiction titles: Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men. It's the story of a boy in the police state of Muammar Quadafi's Libya who both uses and is used by the system of betrayal and informers. Even I, who avoids fiction for the most part, liked this one, and that's saying something.--David E