Dear Surfer,

Welcome to my website and please forgive me for any mistakes in English. Like most earthlings I am not a native speaker and at least some of what I write is going to sound a little funny. Thought: how tiresome must it be for native speakers to be exposed to all this off-the-mark English all over the web and on satellite TV and at international conferences. On the other hand: at least these natives do not sound like linguistic nouveau riches the way I do.

Enough! Like most writers I use this site to peddle my books, so here I go, peddle peddle. When I said books I actually meant book singular. I have written three, but only one is out in English. It is an account of my time as a correspondent in het Middle-East. I have tried not to do a standard war-hero slash my best friend died of malaria sort-of-book. Instead I wanted to be as critical of correspondents as correspondents are of the rest of humanity. This won me many friends in Holland, but also a whopping quarter of a million copies sold and two major prizes.

The book changed the way many people watch the news, or so I am told by this pretty wonderful review in the Financial Times. There are a few other reviews in English, mostly from Australia: [here] and [here]. In the US the book received no attention whatsoever, something the book acutally predicts. If you know German there's lots a stuff from the Tageszeitung, Die Welt and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The Germans like me and I like them! The book there is called "Wie im Echten Leben" with Klett-Cotta.

The UK edition is coming out in May at Profile, an Arabic and Slovenian translation is in the making. There is also one in Danish with Informations, in Hungarian (Folk som os] and in Italian (Gente come noi).

Who am I anyway? I wish I knew but thank God there are CVs and portfolios so perhaps I can try to change the subject by telling you what mine look like. I was born in 1971 in Amsterdam and educated in the Netherlands, the US and Egypt. In the mid-90s I lived in Cairo for a year to do anthropological fieldwork. My experiences there became the basis for my debut as a writer in 1998, a non-fiction account of a year spent with students: Egypte, een goede man slaat soms zijn vrouw (Egypt, a good man sometimes beats his wife). The book sold over a hundred and fifty thousand copies in the Netherlands and got translated into German (Die Kinder der Midaq Gasse), where it tanked. Perhaps they should have kept the title but then again, perhaps the book is just crap.

Shortly after the publication of my debut I was asked by a Dutch newspaper to become their Middle East correspondent. I jumped at the chance and spent five rollercoaster years as a reporter, first from Cairo, then from Beirut and finally from East-Jerusalem. In 2003 I had had enough and returned to the Netherlands where I spent three years writing my third and latest book (the second one, a non-essentialist guide to Islam, came out in 2001), the aforementioned Het Zijn Net Mensen.

As I said earlier this book had a remarkable impact in my country, selling over two hundred and fifty thousands copies in its hardcover edition alone, picking up two major prizes and sparking a lively and at times emotional debate about the power of the media. Het Zijn Net Mensen makes two main arguments. One is that journalism western style works only in western style societies. The Arab world is comprised of dictatorships and when you restrict yourself to western methods of journalism there you end up with a fundamentally skewed picture of these countries. The other argument is that the promise of objectivity is a harmful myth. The representation of a conflict, for example that in Israel/Palestine or between the US government and Iraq, always involves selection and that selection inevitably helps some parties to the conflict make their points while disenfranchising others. At the same time parties to a conflict differ in their ability to manipulate the newsmedia which creates an extra set of distortions.

Over the past two years I have done a number of lectures and articles in which I try to summarize these two and other arguments. Essentially what I have done is to try to apply academic insights about the dynamics of representation to my own experiences as a representor, i.e. Middle-East correspondent. My final conclusion is that media need to become much more open about the limitations inherent in their work, limitations both in the collection of information and in its representation.

A piece I did for Le Monde Diplomatique elaborates on these points. It can be found here.

As for objectivity this talk I gave to a conference deals with why it is impossible (an insight gained in philosophy and the arts more than a century ago but apparantly still unknown to most media organizations) - here.

If you like some of this stuff please feel free to order hundreds and hundreds of my books. I promise to spend the money wisely. Should you like to get in touch please send an email to my publisher publiciteit@uitgeverijpodium.nl who will forward it.

I hope you understand that I do not include a personal email address. In my work I deal with Islam, Israel and the media and these topics attract a fair share of frightening idiots. Experience shows that these idiots are at least slightly deterred when they know that their emails are read first by someone at my publisher's. PS If you happen to be a frightening idiot yourself please feel deterred, at least slightly.

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	Dear Surfer, Welcome to my website and please forgive me for any mistakes in English. Like most earthlings I am not a native speaker and at least some of what I write is going to sound a little funny. Thought: how tiresome must it be for native speakers to be exposed to all this off-the-mark English all over the web and on satellite TV and at international conferences. On the other hand: at least these natives do not sound like linguistic nouveau riches the way I do. Enough! Like most writers I use this site to peddle my books, so here I go, peddle peddle. When I said books I actually meant book singular. I have written three, but only one is out in English. It is an account of my time as a correspondent in het Middle-East. I have tried not to do a standard war-hero slash my best friend died of malaria sort-of-book. Instead I wanted to be as critical of correspondents as correspondents are of the rest of humanity. This won me many friends in Holland, but also a whopping quarter of a million copies sold and two major prizes. The book changed the way many people watch the news, or so I am told by this pretty wonderful review in the Financial Times. There are a few other reviews in English, mostly from Australia: [here] and [here]. In the US the book received no attention whatsoever, something the book acutally predicts. If you know German there's lots a stuff from the Tageszeitung, Die Welt and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The Germans like me and I like them! The book there is called "Wie im Echten Leben" with Klett-Cotta. The UK edition is coming out in May at Profile, an Arabic and Slovenian translation is in the making. There is also one in Danish with Informations, in Hungarian (Folk som os] and in Italian (Gente come noi). Who am I anyway? I wish I knew but thank God there are CVs and portfolios so perhaps I can try to change the subject by telling you what mine look like. I was born in 1971 in Amsterdam and educated in the Netherlands, the US and Egypt. In the mid-90s I lived in Cairo for a year to do anthropological fieldwork. My experiences there became the basis for my debut as a writer in 1998, a non-fiction account of a year spent with students: Egypte, een goede man slaat soms zijn vrouw (Egypt, a good man sometimes beats his wife). The book sold over a hundred and fifty thousand copies in the Netherlands and got translated into German (Die Kinder der Midaq Gasse), where it tanked. Perhaps they should have kept the title but then again, perhaps the book is just crap. Shortly after the publication of my debut I was asked by a Dutch newspaper to become their Middle East correspondent. I jumped at the chance and spent five rollercoaster years as a reporter, first from Cairo, then from Beirut and finally from East-Jerusalem. In 2003 I had had enough and returned to the Netherlands where I spent three years writing my third and latest book (the second one, a non-essentialist guide to Islam, came out in 2001), the aforementioned Het Zijn Net Mensen. As I said earlier this book had a remarkable impact in my country, selling over two hundred and fifty thousands copies in its hardcover edition alone, picking up two major prizes and sparking a lively and at times emotional debate about the power of the media. Het Zijn Net Mensen makes two main arguments. One is that journalism western style works only in western style societies. The Arab world is comprised of dictatorships and when you restrict yourself to western methods of journalism there you end up with a fundamentally skewed picture of these countries. The other argument is that the promise of objectivity is a harmful myth. The representation of a conflict, for example that in Israel/Palestine or between the US government and Iraq, always involves selection and that selection inevitably helps some parties to the conflict make their points while disenfranchising others. At the same time parties to a conflict differ in their ability to manipulate the newsmedia which creates an extra set of distortions. Over the past two years I have done a number of lectures and articles in which I try to summarize these two and other arguments. Essentially what I have done is to try to apply academic insights about the dynamics of representation to my own experiences as a representor, i.e. Middle-East correspondent. My final conclusion is that media need to become much more open about the limitations inherent in their work, limitations both in the collection of information and in its representation. A piece I did for Le Monde Diplomatique elaborates on these points. It can be found here. As for objectivity this talk I gave to a conference deals with why it is impossible (an insight gained in philosophy and the arts more than a century ago but apparantly still unknown to most media organizations) - here. If you like some of this stuff please feel free to order hundreds and hundreds of my books. I promise to spend the money wisely. Should you like to get in touch please send an email to my publisher publiciteit@uitgeverijpodium.nl who will forward it. I hope you understand that I do not include a personal email address. In my work I deal with Islam, Israel and the media and these topics attract a fair share of frightening idiots. Experience shows that these idiots are at least slightly deterred when they know that their emails are read first by someone at my publisher's. PS If you happen to be a frightening idiot yourself please feel deterred, at least slightly.