If you bought Suite Française, you may also like this

In my feed from Guardian Books, I read "Stephen Moss meets the man behind the summer's hottest novel". As one has to take note of "hot" novels, I read the piece. But you'll struggle to find out anything about the book itself. It's set in Libya and is told from the perspective of a child and has "excited the critics" (though not one is quoted). That's about it.

It has to be admitted that, on its Amazon page, Hashim Matar's In the Country of Men has a puff from JM Coetzee, but "A poignant story of a child exposed too early to the brutalities of Libyan politics" is hardly excitement is it?

Of course, all this has nothing to do with the fact that Penguin has signed him up in a six-figure deal.