Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "greece"

I'm taking a break of a couple of weeks between drafts of my latest novel. To clear my head and to allow my body to accustom itself to a step up in desert heat here in Jerusalem (it's hard to concentrate the first day the temperature hits 35 degrees, particularly when you write standing up as I do). So it's good to have reminders of how my novels are establishing themselves on the international thriller and mystery scene.

In the post yesterday, I received some copies of the small-format UK version of my third Palestinian crime novel THE SAMARITAN'S SECRET from my editor at Atlantic, the delightful Sarah Norman. The large format edition, published in January, was green. The new one, which'll be published on July 1, is brown. I like it because it's slightly larger (B format in publishing parlance) than the tiny A-format versions of my first two novels, released in the UK as THE BETHLEHEM MURDERS and THE SALADIN MURDERS.

Over at my agent's office, I also picked up copies of my first novel in the French pocketbook version. LE COLLABORATEUR DE BETHLEEM (as THE COLLABORATOR OF BETHLEHEM is known to thin, well-coutured ladies and men who shrug a lot when they say "Boff!") has been nominated for the Prix des Lecteurs des Livres de Poche.

Before I tracked across my agent's courtyard with my pile of French pocket books, I signed a contract for the publication of my first novel in Greek. I'll be with Kastaniotis Editions in Athens. Thus my shelf of foreign-language books will now test my language abilities with one which will be "all Greek to me" and, as my second book came out this month in Holland, "double Dutch."

Maybe the heat's getting to me. With wordplay like that, I ought to get back to the next draft of my novel....

The Independent runs a periodical feature in which it picks authors to write about a book which changed their lives. Last week the London newspaper asked me to write the piece. Here it is:

In early 1999, King Hussein fell sick on his return from cancer treatment in the US. I was Middle East correspondent for The Scotsman. Many colleagues with bigger expense budgets were already in Jordan on death watch. I poked through a second-hand bookshop on a narrow lane in Jerusalem, wondering if I ought to go too.

I picked up a 1958 edition of The King Must Die by Mary Renault. The title seemed like a good joke to share with my fellow hacks. It decided me. I paid a few shekels for it and went off happily to pack for a trip across the Jordan Valley.

Renault took the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and constructed a novel of the historical circumstances which may have lain behind it. In the novel, the young hero becomes a champion "bull-dancer" in Crete, leaping over charging animals, and escapes to become king in Athens. Renault's sensitive characterisation and historical sense of place hooked me. In her day (she died in 1978) other writers often suggested Renault was really a male homosexual, assuming that a woman couldn't write so vividly about men. I've striven for that depth of empathy in writing about a foreign culture in my novels.

Renault's approach to Greek history shaped my Palestinian crime novels. Writing at a time when frank examinations of contemporary homosexuality – Renault was lesbian – were taboo, she made her readers look again at love between people of the same sex. She placed that love in the context of history and stories we all think we know – the Minotaur, the trial of Socrates, Alexander's conquests – and then forced us to accept that the heroes of that period had a starkly different view of sexuality. In other words, she redirected us from the myth to the reality.

I've tried to do that with the Palestinians, who are stereotyped in the news as victims or as terrorists, and so I have focused instead on real people I've known, aiming to get at the depth of their emotions.

As for Hussein, he succumbed to lymphoma. That night, after deadline, reporters packed the bar of the Intercontinental, sucking on fat Habanas and downing Laphroaig, excited by a get-together with colleagues usually spread across the region. The next day, Hussein's cortege passed through sombre crowds in the wind and rain. I happened to laugh at a remark by another journalist. An old Bedouin turned tearful, red eyes on me. I was ashamed of my laughter. For him, this wasn't a news story or even history. It was the passing of someone who had been important in his life.

It's his emotion that I remember about that day, rather than the newspaper prognostications for the political future of the Middle East, and emotion is the heart of a novel, even a political novel. Throughout the funeral, The King Must Die was in my pocket.

Matt Rees's 'The Fourth Assassin' is published by Atlantic

A book takes a long time to write, and then it takes a while to sell. And another while to sell in another country, and another after that. So a writer’s smile spreads across time.

My long-term grin widened this weekend, when I signed with my UK publisher for my next two books. Not only because Atlantic, the excellent publisher which has brought out all four of my Palestinian crime novels, bought my next books. But because Atlantic is launching a very exciting new imprint called Corvus.

The new imprint is headed by Nicolas and Anthony Cheetham, a father and son team who made Quercus such an important imprint. They’ve taken on my next book MOZART’S LAST ARIA, which is already completed and being edited in New York by the delightful Claire Wachtel at HarperCollins, and the novel I’m currently writing, which has the working title CARAVAGGIO ON FIRE. It’s about the Italian artist who, incidentally, is thought to have died 400 years ago on Sunday.

Writers will know what I mean when I say that signing the contract is a wonderful marker, but also similar to many other things in a writer’s life – it seems like a big milestone, but no one’s around to witness it except you, so you have to go inside yourself to enjoy the moment.


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