Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "canada"

Toronto Star Mideast correspondent Oakland Ross writes about my path to happiness -- via the less than happy occurrences of the region. It's a different, more personal kind of profile than the sort of thing journalists usually write, which is perhaps due to the novelist's sensibility Oakland brings to the piece (He's the author of historical novels set in Mexico.)

Welsh writer quit Time magazine to pen books in popular sleuth series
May 27, 2009 Oakland Ross MIDDLE EAST BUREAU

JERUSALEM–Happiness did not find Matt Beynon Rees.

Instead, Matt Beynon Rees found happiness.

First, however, he was obliged to travel to the Middle East, not a region of the world noted for an over-abundance of glee. Read more...

The first rock concert I ever attended was a performance by Canada's greatest rockers Rush. I've loved Canadians ever since. In the London (Ontario) Free Press recently, Joan Barfoot gave me another reason to adore them. She gives a terrific review to the second of my Palestinian crime novels A GRAVE IN GAZA (UK title The Saladin Murders). Of my sleuth, she writes: "Omar Yussef is a brilliant creation--an outraged, modest, wry and dogged involuntary detective who is a clear, friendly and bitterly amusing comrade through the maze of horrors that a trapped populace endures. A Grave in Gaza, as well as Rees's previous Omar Yussef novel The Collaborator of Bethlehem, demonstrates the best qualities crime fiction can achieve -- gripping plots featuring a sympathetic protagonist about vital subjects."

I like to do my bit to help the effort to save our planet. Last week in Rome my wife and I confronted a brand new recycling program which, mainly, seemed to consist of workmen loading enormous amounts of bottles into their tiny dump truck outside our window at 5 a.m. We cheered them on and put our bottles in the right bin. Unbeknownst to me, my Palestinian crime novels also played a part in the Copenhagen climate summit by providing solace and welcome distraction to Jim Prentice, the Canadian Environment Minister. In the National Post, Jim writes: "Ian Rankin is always reliable, and his latest book, Doors Open, is a good yarn. More recently, I have turned to new writers like Matt Beynon Rees, the former Jerusalem bureau chief for Time. He has introduced me to his series detective, Omar Yussef, and a new setting: the Middle East. My favourites, The Collaborator of Bethlehem and, currently, A Grave in Gaza, are hard to put down." You see, even if you're about to try to save the planet alongside the world's other Environment honchos, it's still hard to take a break from reading my books. As Canada's environment is one of the loveliest in the world, I'm rather pleased about this. Thanks for reading, Jim.