U.S. undergraduates often hold ill-informed and stereotypical perceptions about the Middle East. While theories of comparative politics can help undergraduates gain a more nuanced view of the region, these theories often strike students as extremely abstract and unrelated to actual experience. The use of novels from the Middle East can help instructors overcome both problems. This paper demonstrates how one such work, "In the Country of Men" by Hisham Matar, can illustrate different comparative politics theories while challenging preexisting biases about the region that students may hold.