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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN num: 9781569474723
ISBN number: 1569474729
Label: Soho Crime
Manufacturer: Soho Crime
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 368
Printing Date: February 01, 2008
Publishing house: Soho Crime
Sale Popularity Level: 120947
Studio: Soho Crime
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Praise for the Omar Yussef series:
'The Collaborator of Bethlehem is readable and literate, and offers a vivid portrait of Palestinian life today.'-The Washington Post
'Matt Beynon Rees has taken a complex world of culture clash and suspicion and placed upon it humanity.'-David Baldacci, author of The Collectors
'Omar's probe of a West Bank ruled by political intrigue, religious hatred, and militia thugs lets ex-TIME Jerusalem Bureau Chief Rees make the Mideast conflict personal.'-Entertainment Weekly
'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 light on the conditions in the Palestinian territories.'-David Liss, author of The Ethical Assassin and A Conspiracy of Paper
'Uncovers the gritty, often disturbing human realities of life in Palestinian society. . . . [Rees] gives his characters heart as he gives his readers a thrill.'-TIME.com
'An evocative, compassionate tale.'-San Francisco Chronicle
As he tries to save the lives of two men, Omar Yussef is confronted with the corruption and violence of Gaza's warring government factions and the criminal gangs with which they are connected.
Matt Beynon Rees was born in South Wales. He was previously the Jerusalem bureau chief for TIME magazine, where he is currently a contributor. He is the author of one previous mystery in the Omar Yussef series, The Collaborator of Bethlehem, and the nonfiction work Cain's Field: Faith, Fratricide, and Fear in the Middle East. He lives in Jerusalem.
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Rated by buyers 
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The last page or two do not down load to the Kindle. I deleted and reloaded it to my Kindle. Very frustrating. I want to read the ending.
Rated by buyers 
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One of the more interesting literary trends of recent years is the notable increase in the number of novels, mysteries and stories set in the Middle East and told from the points-of-view of those born to the region. Some of this fiction is written by citizens of that part of the world and some of it by Westerners who have spent significant segments of their own lives there. Regardless of the author's origin, however, the best of this new fiction presents memorable insights into everyday Muslim culture that are seldom as memorably obtainable from histories or other nonfiction written about the area.
Matt Beynon Rees, himself from Wales, but living in Jerusalem, has written one of the better ones with A Grave in Gaza, the second novel in his Omar Yussef mystery series.
Omar Yussef, in his mid-fifties, is the principal of a U.N. sponsored refugee school on the West Bank where he also teaches history. As the novel opens he is accompanying his boss, a U.N. employee from Sweden, on what is to be an inspection tour of U.N. schools in Gaza. But some things are not to be and, because the two men discover almost immediately upon their arrival in Gaza that a local U.N. schoolteacher has been arrested on trumped-up spying and collaboration charges, the inspection tour is forgotten in their efforts to gain the teacher's release before he is tortured or killed by those who hold him.
Yussef is a relatively simple man who has a keen sense of right and wrong, a man who loves his wife and grandchildren, and who feels a strong personal obligation to seek justice in a world gone mad, just the world he finds in Gaza. What starts as a simple quest to free a fellow teacher he has never met, becomes much more complicated when Yussef ignores a warning that there is no such thing as a "single, isolated crime (in Gaza)" and that his insistence upon freeing his colleague will anger and threaten some powerful and ruthless men who are willing to do whatever it takes to stop Yussef's snooping.
In a matter of days, violence becomes the order of the day and Omar Yussef desperately struggles to make sense of the several, almost tribal, factions that compete to dominate what passes for local government in Gaza while trying to stay alive long enough to free both the schoolteacher and his Swedish boss who has by now been kidnaped by unknown gunmen.
A Grave in Gaza is a wonderfully atmospheric novel, especially in terms of the prolonged dust storm that dominates the area, and almost the story itself, during most of Yussef's stay in Gaza. It leaves the reader with a feel for what everyday life in Gaza must be like for those who simply desire to live normal lives with their families amidst a society dominated by crime, corruption, violence, and a religious war that uses their children as disposable, human explosives. Some will consider A Grave in Gaza to be a political novel, some a mystery, and others will call it a thriller. However they categorize the book, most readers will agree that Rees has written a very first rate novel and will look forward to the third Omar Yussef mystery
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"As Omar Yussef came along the passage, the flies left the flooded toilets to examine him. The filth in the latrines soon lured most of them back, but a small, droning escort orbited him as he sweated toward Gaza". This is the opening paragraph in, "A Grave in Gaza", the second installment in the "Omar Yussef" mystery series by Matt Beynon Rees. Rees was the Jerusalem Bureau Chief for "Time" magazine and still lives there, now working as a freelance journalist and author.
The very first book in the series ("The Collaborator of Bethlehem") was, in my opinion, a genre piece. In this book, the author appears to have established his metier. Omar Yussef is not a professional detective. Rather, he is a prematurely aged teacher, whose sense of justice has compelled him into the role of involved detective. The plot, which lacks some of the byzantine complexities characteristic of modern detective novels, is refreshingly linear. Without being a spoiler, suffice it to say that Omar Yussef becomes involved in an endeavor to resolve the arrest of a teacher and is subsequently immersed in the investigation of more complex and inter-related criminal enterprises.
This book is well written and it is brutally honest about the problems that exist in the Palestinian lands, it is (to borrow a phrase from the text), "...a textbook of Gaza history". There are plenty of clever analogies and adroit use of symbolism, such as the khamsin, a 50-day-long dust storm, which obscures the view and permeates the story. The author makes every effort to describe Palestinian Arab culture in a sympathetic fashion, yet, he is quite candid about the role of tribalism (replete with revenge killings), the pervasive corruption of the PLO/Fatah, the pernicious and self-serving interests of the various militias, the corrosive cultural influences, the rampant criminality, the bad governance and the pervasive atmosphere of despair (tinged with a fatalistic element of hope). Israel and Israelis, when they appear at all, do so as a background feature: necessary to the plot, but not a part of it.
In summary, this is a first-class mystery and has other features of substantial interest: the author's narrative skills have gelled in this book. If the reader's attention is dulled by standard, academic histories, it would be hard to beat this book as a fascinating background source. I've pre-ordered the subsequent Omar Yussef book in anticipation of another tour de force.
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This book is more than a mystery but a look at what is happening in Gaza. I thoroughly enjoyed the story even if I believe it portrays a rather implausible series of events. How does Yussef survive?
In a preface, the author states that the book is based on real events and folks were killed and died in the manner described. Is that aspect of the book credible? If so, there can be very little hope. Therefore, the author is indeed making a political statement. Why are good mystery writers so pessimistic about the future in their respective societies? I guess that is the nature of the beast. Is the author trying to link Henning Mankell and his wonderful Wallender series with this book by using a character named Wallender?
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In the early pages of Matt Beynon Rees' new book, "A Grave in Gaza," one its characters observes that in the political and social devastation of today's Gaza territory "there is no single, isolated crime (here). Each one is linked to many others...when you touch one of them, it sets off reverberations that will be felt by powerful people, ruthless people." This is expressed as a friendly warning to the book's protagonist, Omar Yussuf Sirhan (Abu Ramiz), the principled teacher turned-detective, who travels to Gaza from the West Bank on a routine school inspection and finds himself trying to save very first an imprisoned Palestinian whistleblower and very quickly after, his friend and kidnapped UN colleague, Magnus Wallender. Driven by personal decency and a sense of moral outrage, Omar Yussuf plunges into a labyrinth of gang warfare and dueling warlords on behalf of his colleagues and almost loses his own liberty and life.
Author Rees deftly uses Omar Yussuf's pursuit of his colleagues' liberation to take a hard look at the pervasive corruption and physical degeneration that characterize life in Gaza for all those trapped in that small territory. Rees enhances his novel with impressive explanations of the history of the area and, more interestingly, with one wonderful character study after another. The author's graphic and continuing description of the ever-present dust storms and what they do the human disposition and the physical landscape, are highly effective and extremely discomforting. As intricate and good as the plot is in this novel, the character studies and descriptions of the place are even better. This is an insightful and wise book that is rich with wonderful writing. Highly recommended.
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