Matt Rees reads on the radio
Matt Rees is the guest and subject on an installment of National Public Radio's Crime in the City series. Host Eric Westervelt walks with Rees through Nablus, site of Rees' upcoming third Omar Yussef mystery, The Samaritan's Secret. The segment suffers that annoying trait of so many radio features — excessive talk from a host who thinks he's painting vivid word pictures — and Westervelt misuses the word ply.
But Rees is a compelling guide, and he has an apparent love for his setting. Click here to listen to the segment and to read a transcript. You'll also find links to Rees reading from The Samaritan's Secret and to an excerpt from Rees' first novel, The Collaborator of Bethlehem (called The Bethlehem Murders in the U.K.).
Labels: Matt Beynon Rees, Matt Rees, Palestinian territories
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 12:02 AM
2 Comments:
What a great idea - a city that is not only not in the US, but which is little understood here. I learned more about the reality of life in the territories reading The Collaborator of Bethlehem than any amount of news coverage. Of course, that's why Rees quit his old job to write fiction - he was Time's bureau chief in Jerusalem and got sick of filing snippets of news that had to show "both sides" of a tremendously complex situation.
The radio program also says the name Nablus comes from Nea Polis, or New City. This shows the lack of imagination Romans had in naming their towns, and it's the same root as the original Greek name for Naples.
In a scene from a promotional video for the second Omar Yussef book, A Grave in Gaza, he flings aside a copy of Time Magazine in disgust. You'll find a link to the video here.
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