All Blog Posts Tagged 'east' (37)

Pauline Rowson on book tour in North East England in April

I will be undertaking a book tour in the North East of England in April to publicise my latest crime novel to feature the flawed and rugged DI Andy Horton, Undercurrent,published by Severn House and to talk to readers about how I research, plot and write my novels.…

Continue

Added by Pauline Rowson on February 22, 2013 at 2:23am — 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…

Continue

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

What's floating in the Dead Sea?

If you’ve ever slathered your skin in the healing, mineral-rich mud of the Dead Sea, you may want to stop reading now.

More than 8 million gallons of sewage from East Jerusalem is pumped downhill to the Dead Sea, raw and untreated, every day. That’s not just a little icky for those of us who like to float in the lowest body of water on earth. It’s also an environmental catastrophe, and potentially another flashpoint in the conflict between Israelis and…

Continue

Added by Matt Rees on June 28, 2010 at 2:07am — No Comments

How to keep up on the Middle East

JERUSALEM — Time was anyone with an interest in the Middle East could be guaranteed a couple of books a year would be brought out by U.S. journalists based in the region. Now many of those correspondents are history, with news bureaus closing and those that remain cutting back. The new books written by Americans tend to be by think-tank types or others whose agenda is hard to figure out.

But you know that already. It’s one reason you’re reading GlobalPost, which was founded… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on June 20, 2010 at 9:19pm — No Comments

The war Israelis and Palestinians plan

JERUSALEM — There’s an old Arab aphorism: “A man with a plan takes action; a man with two plans gets confused.” Apply that to the Israelis and to the Palestinians, and the nonsensical sequence of recent events in the Middle East starts to fall into a comprehensible pattern.

It’s not a pleasant pattern, because it leads to war.

First, before we get to the fireworks, let’s recap all the nonsense.

The…

Continue

Added by Matt Rees on April 6, 2010 at 8:01pm — No Comments

Why's a Palestinian sleuth in Brooklyn?

I’ve been called the Dashiell Hammett of Palestine, the John Le Carre of the Middle East, the James Ellroy of…Palestine, the Graham Greene of Jerusalem, and the Georges Simenon of the Palestinian refugee camps. Depends which review you happen to have read.

I’ve written three previous crime novels about Omar Yussef, my Palestinian schoolteacher/sleuth. Omar has been called the Philip Marlowe of the Arab street, the Hercules Poirot of the Near East, Sam Spade fed…

Continue

Added by Matt Rees on February 12, 2010 at 5:50pm — No Comments

Obama's speech: the view from Jerusalem

President Barack Obama spelled out what he expects of the Israeli government in his Cairo speech, issuing a challenge that most commentators here believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no way of meeting [I wrote on Global Post today].

Obama’s speech, carried live on all three main Israeli television stations, made clear his firm opposition to any sort of building in Israel’s West Bank settlements. “This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on June 5, 2009 at 12:42am — 3 Comments

May Allah bless such reviewers

America, the National Catholic weekly, includes a great review of The Samaritan's Secret, the third of my Palestinian crime novels, this week. "Rees masterfully concocts another claustrophobic tale from the occupied territories that takes us deep into the Palestinian experience even as it entertains," writes Claire Schaeffer-Duffy. She also calls my detective… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on May 19, 2009 at 4:38pm — No Comments

Beastly Me: What Israel learned from Arafat

Tomorrow's Netanyahu-Obama summit has Iran, Gaza, and settlements on the agenda, but the Israeli leader will bring a new tactic learned from an old nemesis. On The Daily Beast today, my take on how Bibi will "pull an Arafat."

Added by Matt Rees on May 18, 2009 at 1:40am — 5 Comments

Pope kicks off red slippers and wonders why he came

Pope's visit satisfies few

Analysis: After a five-day visit to the Holy Land, the Pope may be wondering why he came. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost

JERUSALEM — As the Pope’s special El Al flight departed Tel Aviv for Rome Friday at the end of his five-day visit to the Holy Land, he might have kicked off his red slippers, dropped his seat into recline, and wondered why he bothered to… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on May 16, 2009 at 1:21am — No Comments

Hebron settlers sit tight and worry

As the U.S. increases pressure on Israel to dismantle settlements, Hebron residents wonder who they can turn to. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost

HEBRON, West Bank — He’s stayed in the largest town in the West Bank for 36 years, even though most of its 167,000 residents want him to leave. He’s just won a $50,000 prize for his “Zionist activities” there. His country’s new… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on May 13, 2009 at 4:43pm — No Comments

The Writing Life interview: Barbara Nadel

One of the jobs authors are required to perform to help promote their work is the strange task of procuring from other authors something called a “blurb”—the praise you’ll find on the back cover of books. They ought to come from authors whose readers might also be interested in your book--that's the idea. In 2006, when I sent out advance copies of my first novel “… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on May 12, 2009 at 7:10pm — No Comments

The right Holy Land, the wrong Holy Father

My irreverent take on the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI to the Holy Land features prominently on The Daily Beast today. Maybe people always say their take is "irreverent," but in the case of a story about the Pope I feel justified in using it...

Added by Matt Rees on May 11, 2009 at 10:50pm — 2 Comments

Gaza gets manure, but no one to spread it

Billions promised, but Gazans still waiting

Four months on from the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, Palestinians have seen little of the money pledged for reconstruction. By Matt Beynon Rees, on Global Post.

RAMALLAH — Money, wrote the English philosopher Francis Bacon, is like manure: of very little use unless it is spread.

Since an international… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on April 29, 2009 at 2:13pm — No Comments

Baksheeshed to the Bone

I'm guest-blogger today on Checkpoint Jerusalem, the excellent and delightfully varied blog by McClatchy Newspapers Middle East correspondent Dion Nissenbaum. Dion does a better job of rooting out interesting cultural angles on the news than anyone else covering the Middle East. Under the headline "Jesus was… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on April 28, 2009 at 11:58pm — 2 Comments

What's the difference between Sharansky and Lieberman? Apart from a few inches, not much

By Matt Beynon Rees, published on Global Post

JERUSALEM — So, there are two eastern European guys, one from Ukraine and the other from Moldova.

One of them is on the short side and is a chess whiz who suffered through a Siberian labor camp for his uncompromising belief in democracy and freedom. Meet Natan Sharansky, who was picked this weekend by Israeli Prime… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on April 24, 2009 at 3:10am — No Comments

Tel Aviv at 100

Israel’s hippest, most tolerant city celebrates its centenary

By Matt Beynon Rees on Global Post

TEL AVIV—Purple fireworks sprayed off the roof of Tel Aviv’s City Hall last week to open festivities marking a century since Zionist pioneers began construction of the “first Hebrew city.” Watching among the crowd in Rabin Square, Marko Martin wept.

A German… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on April 13, 2009 at 5:41pm — No Comments

Somali pirates, Sri Lankan slaughter, and capybara meat in a roquefort sauce

I was a guest on the BBC World Service's The World Today programme this morning. It's an eclectic news show which ranges from Somali pirates, to the Sri Lankan government's bloody new assault on the Tamil Tigers, and the taste of capybara meat (a clandestine delicacy in Venezuela apparently, although the BBC's reporter sampled it in a roquefort sauce, which strikes me as a terrible mistake.) You can listen… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on April 13, 2009 at 12:17am — No Comments

Measuring Up: Inside Netanyahu's Head

Here's my post this week on Global Post:

JERUSALEM — In Hebrew the word for “to visit” – levaker – is the same as the word for “to criticize.” He visited me; he criticized me. Exactly the same.

So why would you invite 30 of the most critical people in the country to visit you every Sunday, to sit around your table and run their mouths?

You… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on April 7, 2009 at 7:28pm — No Comments

The Guardian: 5 Foreign Sleuths to Read

The Guardian recently ran an interesting article seeking to explain the popularity of crime novels set in "exotic" locations -- either written by locals or by foreigners living there. The article makes a few worthwhile points about the basics of this new-ish… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on April 5, 2009 at 4:49pm — No Comments