All Blog Posts Tagged 'West' (32)

Laura Childs, Nancy West, Joyce & Jim Lavene, short stories, giveaways & more in KRL

Up in Kings River Life this morning we have a review of Nancy G. West's latest mystery "Dang Near Dead", a fun guest post from Nancy where she interviews her main character & a chance to win a copy of not only this book but the one before it http://kingsriverlife.com/01/12/dang-near-dead-by-nancy-g-west/

Also up in KRL this morning, a review of Jim & Joyce Lavene's latest supernatural…

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Added by Lorie Ham on January 13, 2013 at 3:37am — No Comments

My Mozart novel and the intifada

If there had never been a Palestinian intifada, I might never have written my novel about the death of Mozart, MOZART’S LAST ARIA, which is published today in the UK by Corvus.

Of course, 4,000 people would also be alive who are now dead. In the course of writing about that destruction between 2000 and 2006, I saw some terrible things, experienced some frightful emotions, and internalized shocking facts about the world around me. It would’ve been easy to become depressed or to descend…

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Added by Matt Rees on May 1, 2011 at 6:27pm — No Comments

A Voice for her People: Susan Abulhawa’s Writing Life interview

Susan Abulhawa is a unique voice in contemporary fiction. She’s a Palestinian, born in Kuwait to a refugee family. She spent some years in an orphanage in East Jerusalem, her ancestral city, before university education in the US and she now lives near Philadelphia. She’s the founder of a wonderful charity,…

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Added by Matt Rees on April 8, 2011 at 7:23pm — No Comments

Bethlehem upbeat for Christmas

For the first time in years, the people of Bethlehem have something more to celebrate at Christmas than the recollection of an important birth in their town 2,000 years ago.

After the city’s economy was devastated by the Palestinian intifada over the last decade, Bethlehem’s economic recovery has picked up pace in the last year with gross domestic product rising by 9 percent. This Christmas the city’s streets are packed with tourists and pilgrims, and if the holy family were to…

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Added by Matt Rees on December 25, 2010 at 7:44pm — No Comments

Extreme weather boosts creativity

Samuel Johnson wrote that “When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather.” The good doctor wrote that in 1758, long before the conversation of Englishmen was informed by the hyperbolic outrage of London’s present tabloids. Just lately it seems he might amend his phrasing to “their only talk.”

The British are in a weather frenzy. Snow has shut down Heathrow Airport essentially for five days. Other airports are stuttering, trains are barely operating, roads…

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Added by Matt Rees on December 23, 2010 at 10:06pm — 1 Comment

New West Bank road to peace?

ST. GEORGE’S MONASTERY, West Bank — Gathered in the chapel of this outpost in the Judean Desert last week, the Orthodox priests chanted “Lord, have mercy” in Greek, in a service of blessing for a new road that makes the venerable building accessible to the growing number of tourists willing to dare a visit to the troubled Holy Land.

As far as the Palestinian Authority is concerned, the priests may as well have been speaking, well, Greek. Because the road was built by Israel over land the…

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Added by Matt Rees on December 14, 2010 at 2:15am — No Comments

Going historical

Writing of the disdain expressed for genre novels by critics, Raymond Chandler said that there were just as many bad “literary novels” of the type favored by critics as there were bad genre stories – except that the bad literary novels didn’t get published. In other words, there’s nothing inherent in so-called genre fiction that makes it lesser than “literary” fiction.

Chandler knew what he was talking about. His great noir novels, such as “The Big Sleep”…

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Added by Matt Rees on September 1, 2010 at 6:06pm — 1 Comment

With democracy like this, who needs dictators?

JERUSALEM — Israelis like to point out that theirs is the only democracy in a Middle East otherwise dominated by repressive regimes. Given the performance of legislators in the parliamentary session that just ended here, you might be forgiven for asking: with democracy like this, who needs dictators?

The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, broke up last week for its summer vacation. The speaker of the Knesset, Reuven Rivlin, sent lawmakers on their way with an…

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Added by Matt Rees on August 1, 2010 at 11:40pm — No Comments

Israeli settlements: frozen, still cooking

JERUSALEM — Palestinian negotiators said again this week they’d refuse to re-enter direct peace talks with Israel unless the current partial freeze on construction in Israeli settlements is extended when its term runs out in September.

But as <a href="http://www.btselem.org/English/Publications/Summaries/201007_By_Hook_and_by_Crook.asp">a report</a> released this week by the Israeli human-rights organization B’Tselem reveals, a real settlement freeze…

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Added by Matt Rees on July 24, 2010 at 4:05pm — No Comments

All talk, no two states

At his White House press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, United States President Barack Obama enthused that the talks about talks will probably lead to talks, and his assessment was that the Israeli government is ready to take part in those talks.

As the camera shutters clicked and the Israeli prime minister cocked his eyebrow in the way he favors when trying to look smarter than everyone else in the room, the most powerful…

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Added by Matt Rees on July 10, 2010 at 12:39am — 1 Comment

Motor sport, Palestinian style

Their politics might be spinning wheels, but Palestinians are revving engines on the race track.

NABLUS, West Bank — For a change, the Palestinians gathered on the main street of Nablus were happy to be going around in circles.

Palestinian politics makes a lot of noise, only to end up spinning its wheels, moving no closer to statehood or peace. But the same combination on the race track is attracting growing attention for the…

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Added by Matt Rees on June 13, 2010 at 12:28am — No Comments

Israel prepares for next threat--nuclear?

NABLUS, West Bank — Six years ago, during the Palestinian intifada, I sat on a dusty hilltop overlooking this most violent of West Bank towns with a dozen of the top Israeli officers in the area. The brigade commanders told their regional chiefs that all the police work and house-to-house fighting of the intifada had made their troops ill-prepared for a real war. “If we had to fight in Lebanon, my men wouldn’t know what they were doing,” shouted one.

In 2006,…

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Added by Matt Rees on May 23, 2010 at 7:47pm — 2 Comments

Jimmy Carter, apartheid, hemorrhoids and Matt Beynon Rees

I often receive emails from book stores, amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and online literary sites telling me how much I’d like the novels of Matt Beynon Rees. I’m delighted to see these emails, which are based on my other purchases and interests, as only I can truly know just how much the novels of Matt Beynon Rees have changed my life. (Try them, I’m sure you’ll agree.)

Of course, I also get the occasional email informing me that if I like Matt Beynon…

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Added by Matt Rees on May 21, 2010 at 12:42am — 1 Comment

Hamas rebuilds in West Bank

Hamas is rebuilding its underground powerbase in the West Bank, stockpiling weapons and material underground, biding its time for a renewal of the conflict with its Fatah rivals.

Palestinian security officials have been telling me this for some time, and they are frankly filled with fear and foreboding. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas mentioned it again in an interview with the Arabic newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat during the week, accusing Hamas of smuggling…

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Added by Matt Rees on May 10, 2010 at 5:10pm — No Comments

Good times, danger signs in West Bank

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — The good news is that the West Bank is normal — kind of — and that people are content — sort of. The bad news, the Palestine Liberation Organization thinks it’s responsible for the good news.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who’s also the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chief, has decided to stamp down on the man who’s actually made life bearable in the West Bank, Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad, and his plan to declare…

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Added by Matt Rees on May 5, 2010 at 11:35pm — No Comments

Israeli settler sect: Messiah is coming

GIVAT ONAN, West Bank—On this windblown outpost in the hills north of Jerusalem, a small fringe of Israeli settlers strives to bring the day of redemption promised, as they believe, in the Bible.

A controversial sect shunned by nearby Israeli settlements, the Brothers of Onan believe that by “spilling their seed” on the land of the ancient biblical Jewish homeland, they will hasten the coming of the Messiah. With the Israeli communities of the West Bank…

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Added by Matt Rees on April 1, 2010 at 6:00pm — 1 Comment

Why I love clogged Arab toilets better than Amazon Kindles

As I journey around the Middle East researching my Palestinian crime novels, I love to come upon a stinking squatting-toilet, its evacuation hole bubbling with dark, sinister turds and the air strong with the scent of barely digested, unhygienically prepared lamb kebab. I adore such a khazi on sight, because no one cleaned it up for me or tried to create an illusion that it was just like a toilet in Manhattan or Munich or my mother’s house.

That toilet is…

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Added by Matt Rees on March 12, 2010 at 12:16am — 3 Comments

Born Hamas, turned Shin Bet

How the son of a Hamas founder ended up an Israeli agent, as told by the "Green Prince" himself. (I posted this on GlobalPost)

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Parents often lament that their kids don’t follow them into their chosen professions. They ought to think themselves lucky. They…

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Added by Matt Rees on February 26, 2010 at 10:44pm — No Comments

Inventing the Palestinian detective

The dead man's mother raged and cried as she told me how she’d discovered her son’s body, in the cabbage patch outside her home. She’d gone down on her knees, she said, touched his blood and wiped her fingers on her face and called out that God is most great.

As the wind came winter cold off the Judean Desert, I watched her weep and thought: “I have to write a novel about this.”

Forgive me if that sounds heartless, but I’m a…

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Added by Matt Rees on February 25, 2010 at 4:52pm — 1 Comment

Writer declares he's pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli

The best thing about switching from journalism to fiction writing is that people show you more respect.

As a journalist covering a highly contentious issue like the Israel-Palestinian conflict, I was often subject to rather nasty verbal attacks during public speaking engagements. For a partisan of either side, I seemed a fine target for their generalized contempt—they thought journalists were all against them and here was a live reporter on whom they could vent their… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on January 15, 2010 at 5:22pm — No Comments