Matt Beynon Rees
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Matt Beynon Rees
Matthew Beynon Rees is a Welsh novelist and journalist. He is the author of The Palestine Quartet, a series of crime novels about Omar Yussef, a Palestinian sleuth, and of historical novels and thrillers. He is the winner of a Crime Writers' Association Dagger for his crime fiction in the UK and a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award for fiction in the US. His first book was a work of nonfiction, ''Cain's Field: Faith, Fratricide, and Fear in the Middle East'' in 2004 ( Free Press), about Israeli and Palestinian societies. ''The New York Times'' called ''The Collaborator of Bethlehem'', the first of his Palestinian crime novels about Bethlehem sleuth Omar Yussef, "an astonishing first novel." Le Figaro'' called the book "a masterpiece." Rees's writing has been compared with the work of Graham Greene, John le Carré, Georges Simenon and Henning Mankell. The French magazine L'Express called him "the Dashiell Hammett of Palestine." Rees's books have sold in 25 languages. ...
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Omar Yussef (character)
Omar Yussef is a fictional character and the hero of a series of crime novels by Welsh writer Matt Rees. Character biography Early life According to the novels, Omar Yussef Subhi Sirhan, also known as Abu Ramiz (the father of Ramiz), was born in 1948 in Malha, a destroyed Palestinian village south of Jerusalem (''The Collaborator of Bethlehem'', Soho Crime, New York, February 2007). His father, the village mukhtar, or headman, fled with his family and the other villagers, on the creation of the Israeli state in the spring of that year. The Sirhan family went to the Dehaisha Refugee Camp, set up in fields south of Bethlehem. Omar's father rented a home, and Omar continues to lease the same stone house. Career Omar attended Damascus University and became involved in student politics. It was at University that he met Khamis Zeydan, a young Palestinian nationalist and a refugee from the coastal town of Jaffa, who later became police chief in Bethlehem. Omar's adherence to the ...
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Palestinian Christians
Palestinian Christians () are a religious community of the Palestinian people consisting of those who identify as Christians, including those who are cultural Christians in addition to those who actively adhere to Christianity. They are a religious minority within Palestine and Israel, as well as within the Palestinian diaspora. Applying the broader definition, which groups together individuals with full or partial Palestinian Christian ancestry, the term was applied to an estimated 500,000 people globally in the year 2000. As most Palestinians are Arabs, the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Christians also identify as Arab Christians. Palestinian Christians belong to one of a number of Christian denominations, including Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, Catholicism (both the Latin Church and the Eastern-Rite Churches), and Protestantism (Anglicanism, Lutheranism, etc.), among others. In the 1990s, an estimate by Professor Bernard Sabella of Bethlehem University pos ...
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Death Of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
On 5 December 1791, the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died at his home in Vienna at the age of 35. The circumstances of his death have attracted much research and speculation. The principal sources of contention are: # Whether Mozart declined gradually, experiencing great fear and sadness, or whether he was fundamentally in good spirits toward the end of his life, then felled by a relatively sudden illness # What disease caused Mozart's death # Whether his funeral arrangements were the normal procedures for his day, or whether they were of a disrespectful nature There is a range of views on each of these points, many of which have varied radically over time. The course of Mozart's final illness Traditional narrative Mozart scholarship long followed the accounts of early biographers, which proceeded in large part from the recorded memories of his widow Constanze and her sister Sophie Weber as they were recorded in the biographies by Franz Niemetschek and Georg Nikolaus ...
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Maria Anna Mozart
Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia "Marianne" Mozart (30 July 1751 – 29 October 1829), nicknamed Nannerl, was a highly regarded musician from Salzburg, Austria. In her childhood, she developed into an outstanding keyboard player under the tutelage of her father Leopold Mozart, Leopold. She became a celebrated child prodigy and went on concert tours through much of Europe with her parents and her younger brother Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. At age 17, her career as a touring musician came to an end, though she continued to work at home teaching piano and performing on occasion. At age 33 she married, moved to a village six hours by carriage from Salzburg, and there raised her own and her husband's children. On her widowhood in 1801, she returned to Salzburg and resumed teaching and performance. She is known to have composed works of music, though no manuscripts survive. In her later years she contributed to the biographical study of her late brother. Life Maria Anna Mozart is known to s ...
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The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK (formerly News International), which is owned by News Corp. Times Newspapers also publishes ''The Times''. The two papers, founded separately and independently, have been under the same ownership since 1966. They were bought by News International in 1981. In March 2020, ''The Sunday Times'' had a circulation of 647,622, exceeding that of its main rivals, '' The Sunday Telegraph'' and '' The Observer'', combined. While some other national newspapers moved to a tabloid format in the early 2000s, ''The Sunday Times'' retained the larger broadsheet format and has said that it intends to continue to do so. As of December 2019, it sold 75% more copies than its sister paper, ''The Times'', which is published from Monday to Saturday. Th ...
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The New Republic
''The New Republic'' (often abbreviated as ''TNR'') is an American magazine focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts from a left-wing perspective. It publishes ten print magazines a year and a daily online platform. ''The New York Times'' described the magazine as partially founded in Teddy Roosevelt's living room and known for its "intellectual rigor and left-leaning political views." History 1914–1974: Early years Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in humanitarian and moral passion and one based in an ethos of scientific analysis". ''The New Republic'' was founded by Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, and Walter Weyl. They gained the financial backing of heiress Dorothy Payne Whitney and of her husband, Willard Straight, who eventually became the majority owner. The magazine's first issue was published on November 7, 1914. The magazine's politics were libe ...
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Samaritans
Samaritans (; ; ; ), are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Hebrews and Israelites of the ancient Near East. They are indigenous to Samaria, a historical region of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah that comprises the northern half of what is the West Bank in Palestine. They are adherents of Samaritanism, an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion that developed alongside Judaism. According to their tradition, the Samaritans are descended from the Israelites who, unlike the Ten Lost Tribes of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, were not subject to the Assyrian captivity after the northern Kingdom of Israel (Samaria), Kingdom of Israel was destroyed and annexed by the Neo-Assyrian Empire around 720 BCE. Regarding the Samaritan Pentateuch as the unaltered Torah, the Samaritans view the Jews as close relatives but claim that Judaism fundamentally alters the original Yahwism, Israelite religion. The most notable theological ...
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Kasbah
A kasbah (, also ; , , Maghrebi Arabic: ), also spelled qasbah, qasba, qasaba, or casbah, is a fortress, most commonly the citadel or fortified quarter of a city. It is also equivalent to the term in Spanish (), which is derived from the same Arabic word. By extension, the term can also refer to a medina quarter, particularly in Algeria. In various languages, the Arabic word, or local words borrowed from the Arabic word, can also refer to a settlement, a fort, a watchtower, or a blockhouse. Citadel or fortress The term ''qasaba'' was historically flexible but it essentially denotes a fortress, commonly a citadel that protects a city or settlement area, or that serves as the administrative center. A kasbah citadel typically housed the military garrison and other privileged buildings such as a palace, along with other amenities such as a mosque and a hammam (bathhouse). Some kasbahs are built in a strategic elevated position overlooking the city, like the Kasbah of the O ...
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Nablus
Nablus ( ; , ) is a State of Palestine, Palestinian city in the West Bank, located approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 156,906. Located between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a commercial and cultural centre of the State of Palestine, home to An-Najah National University, one of the largest Palestinian institutions of higher learning, and the Palestine Exchange, Palestine Stock Exchange.Amahl Bishara, ‘Weapons, Passports and News: Palestinian Perceptions of U.S. Power as a Mediator of War,’ in John D. Kelly, Beatrice Jauregui, Sean T. Mitchell, Jeremy Walton (eds.''Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency,''pp.125-136 p.126. Nablus is under the administration of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). The modern name of the city can be traced back to the Roman Empire, Roman period, when it was named by Roman emperor Vespasian in 72 CE. During the Byzantine Empire, Byzantine period, conflict between the ci ...
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Gaza Strip
The Gaza Strip, also known simply as Gaza, is a small territory located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea; it is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories, the other being the West Bank, that make up the State of Palestine. Inhabited by mostly Palestinian refugees and their descendants, Gaza is one of the List of countries and dependencies by population density, most densely populated territories in the world. An end of 2024 estimate puts the population of the Strip at 2.1 million, which was a 6% decline from the previous year due to the Gaza war. Gaza is bordered by Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the east and north. Its capital and largest city is Gaza City. The territorial boundaries were established while Gaza Administration of the Gaza Strip by Egypt, was controlled by the Kingdom of Egypt at the conclusion of the 1948 Arab–Israeli war. During that period the All-Palestine Protectorate, also known as All-Palestine, was established with limited reco ...
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Miss Marple
Miss Jane Marple is a fictional character in Agatha Christie's crime novels and short stories. Miss Marple lives in the village of St Mary Mead and acts as an amateur consulting detective. Often characterised as an elderly spinster, she is one of Christie's best-known characters and has been portrayed numerous times on screen. Her first appearance was in a short story published in '' The Royal Magazine'' in December 1927, " The Tuesday Night Club", which later became the first chapter of '' The Thirteen Problems'' (1932). Her first appearance in a full-length novel was in '' The Murder at the Vicarage'' in 1930, and her last appearance was in '' Sleeping Murder'' in 1976. Origins The character of Miss Marple is based on friends of Christie's step grandmother, Margaret Miller, née West. Christie attributed the inspiration for the character to multiple sources, stating that Miss Marple was "the sort of old lady who would have been rather like some of my step grandmother's Ealing ...
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Yasser Arafat
Yasser Arafat (4 or 24 August 1929 – 11 November 2004), also popularly known by his Kunya (Arabic), kunya Abu Ammar, was a Palestinian political leader. He was chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from 1969 to 2004, President of the State of Palestine from 1989 to 2004 and President of the Palestinian Authority (PNA) from 1994 to 2004. Ideologically an Arab nationalist and a Arab socialism, socialist, Arafat was a founding member of the Fatah political party, which he led from 1959 until 2004. Arafat was born to Palestinian parents in Cairo, Egypt, where he spent most of his youth. He studied at the Cairo University, University of King Fuad I. While a student, he embraced Arab nationalist and anti-Zionist ideas. Opposed to the 1948 creation of the State of Israel, he fought alongside the Muslim Brotherhood during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Following the defeat of Arab forces, Arafat returned to Cairo and served as president of the General Union of Palesti ...
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