REES, Matt << back to list Matt Rees is the author of the Omar Yussef mystery series, which has been translated into 20 languages. The author is the recipient of the Golden Dagger Award 2008 (UK) for The Collaborator of Bethlehem. Rees is also the author of Cain’s Field: Faith, Fratricide and Fear in the Middle East (The Free Press), an acclaimed and highly original account of the deep internal divisions within both Israel and the Palestinian community. As Time Magazine Bureau Chief, Rees received a Henry Luce Award for Reporting in 2003 for his coverage of the Middle East. (photo © David Blumenfeld) Web site http://www.mattbeynonrees.com/ Bibliography & Foreign sales THE COLLABORATOR OF BETHLEHEM (Mystery) Rees uses real incidents as well as his knowledge and understanding of Palestinian society to craft a highly original and dark crime thriller, set in Bethlehem. His hero, Omar Yussef, is a schoolteacher, forced by his stubborn commitment to moral principle to weave a dangerous path through the corruption of his own community’s leaders. With THE COLLABORATOR OF BETHLEHEM Rees has created the first Palestinian detective. Rights sold to: USA, Soho Press; UK, Atlantic Books; France, Albin Michel; Italy, Cairo Publishers; Germany, Beck Verlag; Brazil, Planeta; Portugal, Gotica; Spain, Ediciones B; Holland, Ambo/Anthos; Poland, Bertelsmann, Israel, Keter; Denmark, Gyldendal; Norway, Pressforlaget; Sweden, Alfabeta; Iceland, Skuggi; Czech Republic, Euromedia; Romania, Nicolescu; Greece, Kastaniotis; Japan: Random House Kodansha; Indonesia, Diomedia Reviews ”Matt Beynon Rees takes a complex world of culture clash and suspicion and places upon it humanity.” David Baldacci, author of Absolute Power & The Camel Club ”The Collaborator of Bethlehem is the best -- and the rarest -- sort of mystery: exciting and compelling, but it is also a deeply moving story that will, for many readers, shed much needed light on conditions in the Palestinian territories. Matt Beynon Rees’s ability to blend the political and emotional is reminiscent of Graham Greene.” David Liss ”Rees is a terrific journalist who really knows the Middle East and, more important, really knows how to get to the emotional heart of the matter.” Joe Klein, author of Primary Colors A GRAVE IN GAZA (Mystery) The first in a series, is followed by A GRAVE IN GAZA, where Omar Yussef tracks a colleague’s kidnapping and is entangled in Gaza’s deadly rivalries, uncovering a murderous plot to smuggle missiles. Rights sold to: USA, Soho Press; UK, Atlantic Books; France, Albin Michel, Italy, Cairo Publishers; Germany, Beck Verlag; Spain, Ediciones B; Holland, Ambo/Anthos; Poland, Bertelsmann; Denmark, Gyldendal, Norway, Pressforlaget; Romania, Niculescu; Indonesia, Diomedia; Brazil, Record Publishing Review “If Simenon gives you canal-side France and Henning Mankell a desolating Sweden, then Rees wants you to experience the West Bank in all its complexity and despair. The story of Omar Yussef, an elderly teacher fighting to maintain his own idea of integrity while solving a brutal murder, restores detective fiction to its most powerful origins: the lone moral hero in the chaos of the world.” - Sir David Hare, in The Guardian THE SAMARITAN’S SECRET (Mystery) THE SAMARITAN’S SECRET brings Omar Yussef to Nablus where a member of the tiny but ancient Samaritan community has been murdered. This man worked for the Palestinian Authority and controlled hundreds of millions of dollars of government money, which is now missing. Visiting Nablus, Omar Yussef must solve the murder and find the money before all aid to the Palestinians is cut off. Rights sold to: USA, Soho Press; Pb, Mariner; UK, Atlantic Books; France, Albin Michel, Germany, Beck Verlag; Italy, Cairo Publishers; Brazil, Record Publishing; Indonesia, Diomedia Reviews ”Provocative...Rees adopts a humanist perspective, keeping the military maneuvers in the background and focusing on ordinary people struggling to live ordinary lives.” -- The New York Times Book Review BROOKLYN HOURI (Mystery) Omar Yussef, the principal of a UN school in a Bethlehem refugee camp, arrives in New York for a U.N. conference. He goes to the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bay Ridge, where his youngest son, Ala, lives among the big Palestinian community there. In Ala’s apartment Omar discovers the dead body of one of the two young men from Bethlehem with whom his son lives. The third roommate has disappeared and Ala is arrested on suspicion of involvement in the death. Omar Yussef sets out to clear his son and to track down the real killer. The investigation takes Omar deep into the Arab communities of Brooklyn, where he uncovers a plot by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to kill the Palestinian Prime Minister at the UN conference Omar is supposed to be attending. Rights sold to: UK, Atlantic Books; Brazil, Record Publishing; Germany, Beck Verlag; Indonesia, Diomedia THE BEIRUT BRIDE (Mystery) Omar’s son Zuheir has taken a job teaching in Beirut [see The Samaritan’s Secret] and has found a bride, Malak, a bright young woman from a poor family living in Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. Omar and Maryam visit for the engagement party. Omar is disturbed that Zuheir’s recent commitment to Islam seems to have brought him into contact with people who reject the West. Such intolerant ideas suggest to him that his son is rebelling against Omar’s view of the world, but he worries it could go further. Malak’s brother Asad has recently returned from Iraq, where he has been fighting with other jihadis against US forces. He’s now a leader of a group of jihadis in the refugee camp, whose aim is to confront the Lebanese army and to attack Western targets in Beirut. Asad argues with Zuheir, accusing him of running away from the fight against Israel by emigrating from Bethlehem. Since the death of his father, Asad is also head of the family and he uses that position to oppose his sister’s marriage to Zuheir. Asad is found dead and the other jihadis in the camp accuse Zuheir of killing him so that he can marry Malak after all. Zuheir goes into hiding. Omar must clear his son’s name by discovering the true killer of the dead brother. With the help of Malak, his quest takes him into the world of returned jihadis, against a background of the conflict between Palestinian Islamist refugees in the camps, the Lebanese army and the Iranian-backed militia of Hizballah. He discovers that Asad’s death was, in fact, the result of an honor killing a generation before. The book forces Omar to confront his own views of the family in Arab society. Manuscript to be delivered in October 2009 Rights sold to: Atlantic Books, UK CAIN’S FIELD: Battles Between Brothers in the Middle East (non-fiction) A groundbreaking work from Time Magazine’s Jerusalem bureau chief combines a dazzling narrative with a bold insight—that the deep divisions within both Israeli and Palestinian societies must be resolved before true peace can be achieved. While the world focuses its attention almost exclusively on the violent clash between Israel and Palestine, award-winning journalist Matt Rees uses his unparalleled firsthand access and unique perspective to expose the internal rifts and self-defeating strategies on both sides. In Cain’s Field, he explains how the Palestinians are unable to see beyond the occupation of the West Bank, the growing number of Jewish settlers, and other Israeli actions, while the Israelis typically are blind to anything but the intifadeh and the suicide bombings. Neither side can look within itself and agree on how its own community ought to be run. Thus, instead of facing the conflict with brotherhood and solidarity, the situation is worsened by internal divisions. Rights sold to: USA, Free Press Reviews ”No matter how much you think you know about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Matt Rees’s masterful reporting will reshape your perceptions. He burrows deeply into each side’s internal struggles, taking you inside people’s minds. This will change the way you see news from the battleground.” David K. Shipler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land ”Matt Rees is a particularly able foreign correspondent who knows the Middle East better than most anyone. His writing is free of cant and oversimplification, and In Cain’s Field he has looked past the cliches and sureties of the hundred-year war between Arab and Jew and come up with a story that is as original as it is compelling.” Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Yorker. ”Matt Rees is a terrific journalist who really knows the Middle East and, more important, really knows how to get to the emotional heart of the matter-- through individual lives, through remarkable stories of heartbreak, hope and redemption. If there is wisdom, and healing, to be gleaned from this ongoing tragedy, surely it will come from books like this one.” Joe Klein, Time Magazine political columnist and author of Primary Colors.