The Man of Twists and Turns

Mark MacKinnon, the Globe and Mail Middle East bureau chief, publishes an article about me in today’s edition of Canada’s top newspaper. MacKinnon and I went to Bethlehem recently to discuss The Collaborator of Bethlehem, the first of my Palestinian mystery novels. He’s written a terrific piece that highlights why I turned from journalism to fiction–and he does it with a stylistic verve that’s rare in a newspaper article.

MacKinnon notes that my book gives readers “an unusual and realistic look at the lives of the ordinary people trying to go about their lives in the middle of the everyday violence of the Palestinian Territories… Rees’s experiences as a reporter endow the book with a grittiness that another novelist who chose Palestine as a setting wouldn’t have. He expertly takes readers inside crowded Palestinian homes, through Bethlehem’s cobblestone alleys and into the often-murky world of Palestinian Authority politics. “

To read the complete article, go to:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/
story/RTGAM.20070430.wrees30/BNStory/Entertainment/home

Before MacKinnon came to the Middle East, he was the Globe and Mail’s Moscow bureau chief. His book on Russia, The New Cold War, is just out in Canada and comes out in the U.S. in September. Meanwhile, he writes revealingly about Russia on his blog at:
http://markmackinnon.blogspot.com/