Libya, officially the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya ( Arabic: الجماهيرية العربية الليبية الشعبية الإشتراكية العظمى Al-Jamāhīriyyah al-ʿArabiyyah al-Lībiyyah aš-Šaʿbiyyah al-Ištirākiyyah al-ʿUẓmā), is a country located in North Africa. Bordering the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Libya lies between Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west.
Libya's roots stretch back into antiquity. It was ruled in succession by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Ottoman Empire, the Italian Empire, the British Empire, and France before becoming an independent kingdom in late 1951. In 1969, a military coup overthrew King Idris I. The most prominent coup conspirator, Muammar Gaddafi, was ultimately able to fully concentrate power in his own hands during the Libyan Cultural Revolution. Gaddafi remained in power until a civil war, in which the rebels were supported by NATO. He was killed by rebels on 20 October 2011. At least two political bodies claim to be the government of Libya as of 2015.
Libya was part of Italy'sempire when a second world war broke out in 1938. By 1941, Benito Mussolini had designs on Egypt after Britain had withdrawn from the Hess Agreement and gone back to war with Italy and Germany.[1] Using Libya as a launching pad, the Italian army made some brief gains in the Fall of 1941.[2] The British were able to push the Italians right back out of Egypt and into Libya again in short order. However, the British offensive was halted when Germany sent troops into Libya, which later invaded British-held Egypt.[3]
With the end of the war in Europe, Germany had to withdrew its forces from Egypt, but Italy retained its rule over Libya. The fall of Adolf Hitler had shaken the hold of his ally Mussolini in Italy, but he remained in power in mid-1944.
*=denotes a character who was a POV for a single scene
1=denotes a character who was a POV for one volume
2=denotes a character who was a POV for two volumes
3=denotes a character who was a POV for three volumes
4=denotes a character who was a POV for four volumes
5=denotes a character who was a POV for five volumes
6=denotes a character who was a POV for six volumes
† denotes a deceased character.
