In a book club and starting to plan your reads for next year? Check out our 2025 picks.

Matt Beynon Rees Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Matt Beynon Rees

Matt Beynon Rees

Matt Beynon Rees Biography

Journalist and author Matt Beynon Rees was born in Wales in 1967 and studied at Oxford University and the University of Maryland. He then worked as a financial reporter in London, Washington D.C. and New York before becoming the first Middle East correspondent for The Scotsman in 1996. He speaks fluent Arabic and lives in Jerusalem.

As a journalist, he has covered the Middle East for over a decade, with the vast majority of that time spent among Palestinians and Israelis. He's a Contributor for Time based in Jerusalem, where he was the magazine's bureau chief from June 2000 until January 2006. In 2004 he published a nonfiction account of the divisions within Israeli and Palestinian societies called Cain's Field: Faith, Fratricide, and Fear in the Middle East.

His first detective novel, The Collaborator of Bethlehem, the first in a planned series of seven, was published in the U.S. in February 2007. The series has been sold to leading publishers in France, Italy, Britain, Poland, Spain, Germany, Israel, Portugal, and Brazil.

He has wanted to be a writer since he was nine years old and his schoolteacher pinned a story he wrote on the classroom wall. The first mystery he ever read was The Maltese Falcon; he says, "Hammett inspired me to take not just the character but the whole social context of the story. Having been a journalist [in Jerusalem] for the past 10 years, I don't have to wonder what Palestinians are like."

He is described as a dogged reporter, wide reader, old movie buff, and fitness enthusiast.


Bibliography:

Nonfiction:
Cain's Field: Faith, Fratricide, and Fear in the Middle East (2004)

Omar Yussef novels:
The Collaborator of Bethlehem (2007)
A Grave in Gaza (2008)
The Samaritan's Secret (2009)
The Fourth Assassin (2010)

Historical novels:
Mozart's Last Aria (2011)
A Name in Blood (2012)
The Ambassador (2015)

Dominic Verrazzano novels
The Damascus (2016)

Matt Beynon Rees's website

This bio was last updated on 07/03/2016. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Books by this Author

Books by Matt Beynon Rees at BookBrowse
Mozart's Last Aria jacket The Fourth Assassin jacket The Samaritan's Secret jacket A Grave in Gaza jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Matt Beynon Rees but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Izzeldin Abuelaish

    Izzeldin Abuelaish

    Izzeldin Abuelaish, MD, MPH, is a Palestinian physician and infertility expert who was born and raised in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. He received a scholarship to study medicine in Cairo, and then received a ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Collaborator of Bethlehem

    Try:
    I Shall Not Hate
    by Izzeldin Abuelaish

  • Jimmy Carter

    Jimmy Carter

    Jimmy Carter was born in Plains, Georgia in 1924, and served as thirty-ninth President of the United States. He and his wife, Rosalynn, founded The Carter Center, a nonprofit organization that prevents and resolves conflicts,... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Collaborator of Bethlehem

    Try:
    Palestine
    by Jimmy Carter

We recommend 14 similar authors


Non-members can see 2 results. Become a member
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket
    The House of Doors
    by Tan Twan Eng
    Every July, I take on the overly ambitious goal of reading all of the novels chosen as longlist ...
  • Book Jacket: The Puzzle Box
    The Puzzle Box
    by Danielle Trussoni
    During the tumultuous last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, a 17-year-old emperor known as Meiji ...
  • Book Jacket
    Something, Not Nothing
    by Sarah Leavitt
    In 2020, after a lifetime of struggling with increasingly ill health, Sarah Leavitt's partner, ...
  • Book Jacket
    A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens
    by Raul Palma
    Raul Palma's debut novel A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens introduces Hugo Contreras, who came to the ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

The fact of knowing how to read is nothing, the whole point is knowing what to read.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

H I O the G

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.