The Man of Twists and Turns

The Boston Globe’s brilliant young Jerusalem bureau chief Thanassis Cambanis profiles me in last Sunday’s edition. Here’s how Cambanis begins: “Matt Beynon Rees despaired of finding a compelling way to write the true-life stories he covered during a decade as a news journalist in the Middle East, including six years as Time magazine’s bureau chief [...]

Terri Gross interviewed me on yesterday’s Fresh Air arts show on National Public Radio. We talked about my new novel The Collaborator of Bethlehem and current Palestinian politics. You can listen to the 20-minute segment from the show at:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7417698

McClatchy Newspapers Middle East bureau chief Dion Nissenbaum publishes an interview with me today. It features in two of the US chain’s biggest papers, the Miami Herald and the San Jose Mercury News. Dion picked up on something about The Collaborator of Bethlehem that I think will appeal very much to readers, at a time [...]

I was interviewed about what’s really behind the newest developments in Palestinian politics–which involves almost as much murder as one of my books–on NPR’s The World. To listen, go to:http://www.theworld.org/?q=taxonomy_by_date/1/20070209

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Jerusalem correspondent Matthew Kalman profiles me in today’s edition of the paper. It’s a long article with lots of praise for the Omar Yussef Mysteries. It also compares me to one of my heroes, the great San Francisco crime writer Dashiell Hammett:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/04/DDGF6NBRN71.DTL

The latest issue of Library Journal features an interview with me by editor Wilda Williams:http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6396364.html

Publishers Weekly and Booklist, two important arenas for pre-publication reviews, give my forthcoming “The Collaborator of Bethlehem” starred reviews. Here are some excerpts: “This powerful first novel from British journalist Rees humanizes the struggle of the West Bank, where Omar Yussef, a modest 56-year old schoolteacher in the Dehaisha Palestinian refugee camp, becomes an unlikely [...]

The first pre-publication review for The Collaborator of Bethlehem, the Omar Yussef Mystery to be published in the US on February 1 by Soho Press, is out. And Library Journal loves it! The influential magazine gave my book a “Starred Review.” Here it is, reprinted with permission: “In this outstanding debut, Rees, formerly the Jerusalem [...]