Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "finland"

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 partially to replace the disappearing corps of U.S. foreign correspondents. [That's where I first posted this.]

So GlobalPost has solved your journalism problem. But, still, what’re you going to do about the books? With a book written by a foreign correspondent you couldn’t always be sure of a good read —I’ve ploughed through some stinky “notebook dumps” in my time by reporters who padded pages with meaningless tales of their Palestinian and Israeli “friends” — but you at least knew that it was by a responsible journalist answerable to editors and readers even for his extracurricular writings. Not so with think-tank academics whose financing and agenda can make for deeply skewed accounts.

The answer: Europeans. A new book demonstrates what I’m talking about.

“Hold onto Your Veil, Fatima!” is an expose of contemporary Egypt that’s at once harrowing and humorous by Sanna Negus, a reporter for Finland’s YLE Radio and TV.

Negus came to the Middle East in the mid-1990s for graduate studies in Cairo, largely because she wanted to learn an unusual language and figured Arabic fit the bill. (It’s not as unusual as Finnish, but then she already had that covered.) She returned to Cairo, working for the English-language Cairo Times and staying for a decade as YLE’s correspondent. She’s been based in Jerusalem the last two years. (Lawrence Wright, who won a Pulitzer for “The Looming Tower: al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11,” writes in the book’s foreword that Negus is “one of the most informed and well-connected reporters in the region.”)

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.

Cairo is a place we all know to some degree, even if only the image of the pyramids and the Sphinx. A short visit there is enough to make you wonder about how much of this teeming metropolis you really don’t know. No writer gets so deep as Sanna Negus under the skin of this ancient city, which remains key to the future of the benighted Middle East. Sanna’s the Middle East correspondent for Finnish radio and television. Her new book “Hold onto Your Veil, Fatima! And Other Snapshots of Life in Contemporary Egypt” is a stunning portrayal of Egypt that’s both homage and expose. Pulitzer winner Lawrence Wright calls her “one of the most informed and well-connected reporters in the region.” She’s also one of the best writers. Here she talks about the decade she spent in Cairo (before moving to Jerusalem) and how she wrote her book.

How long did it take you to get published?

The initial Finnish version (2005) came out quite smoothly. I first got a writing grant from the biggest publishing house in Finland, WSOY, which allowed me to work on three sample chapters. Less than a year later we signed a contract. The English version took longer to publish, mainly because I got distracted by other things. One UK publishing house was at first interested, but then withdrew and I guess it depressed me and I buried the project for a while. After some friends kicked my behind and told me to get my act together, I took a look at my bookshelf’s Middle Eastern books. So I wrote to Garnet on Monday, they answered on Tuesday and on Friday I got a contract!

Would you recommend any books on writing?

This being my first book, I figured I should probably look into some writing guides. So I read a couple of books in Finnish. While these books gave a boost to my confidence, they still didn’t solve the problem of the blank page. When I was taking my first steps as a journalist (and I never studied journalism or literature), I found Jon Franklin’s Writing For Story useful. But at the end of the day, it’s better to read what other people have written in your genre.

What’s a typical writing day?

The morning starts with some form of exercise, followed by breakfast and several hours of futzing around (checking my email every five minutes, making yet another cup of coffee, doing laundry, going to a supermarket to buy a single item…) Typically I would do research or write down interviews during the day and write late into the night. My creative powers unfold after sunset.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.