"There's a romance between Brooks and the world, and her writing is as full of heart and curiosity as it is intelligence and judgement."Carrie Brown, The Boston Globe
Geraldine Brooks credits an unlikely duo--flatulent sheep and the Nigerian secret police--for her career as a writer of historical fiction. Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, she longed to be a newspaper reporter and after graduating from the University of Sydney she went to work for the Sydney Morning Herald. Three years later, she won a scholarship to attend Columbia University's Graduate school of Journalism. From there, she was hired by The Wall Street Journal. After a year covering basic industry in Cleveland, she returned home to Sydney and opened one of the Journal's farthest flung bureaus, filing stories from the New Guinea highlands, Arnhem Land and South West Tasmania. From New Zealand, in 1987, she filed what she considers her most notable dispatch, on the opportunity to study global warming afforded by the country's huge, methane-producing, sheep population. The so-called "farting sheep" story led to her appointment as Middle East bureau chief for the Journal, where she spent six years covering regional conflicts, including the first Gulf War, and wrote her first book of non-fiction, Nine Parts of Desire, published in 1994. Later, as the Journal's UN Correspondent, she covered conflicts in Bosnia and Somalia and African development issues. In Nigeria to report on Shell Oil's collusion with the Abacha military dictatorship, she was arrested and thrown in a lock up in Port Harcourt, accused of being a spy. While there, she began to consider a midlife career change.
In 1995 she wrote a memoir, Foreign Correspondence, which chronicles a childhood enriched by penpals from around the world, and her adult quest to find them. Her first novel, Year of Wonders, published in 2001, was inspired by the true story of Eyam, Derbyshire, where villagers voluntarily quarantined themselves when plague struck in 1665. He second novel, March, a retelling of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic Little Women from the point of view of Mr. March, the absent father, won the Pulitzer prize for Fiction in 2006. Her most recent novel, People of the Book, has been translated into more than 20 languages and was an instant New York Times bestseller.
She lives on Martha's Vineyard with her husband Tony Horwitz, their sons, Nathaniel and Bizuayehu, and three dogs.
Available now, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March comes an intricate, ambitious novel that traces the journey of a rare illuminated Hebrew manuscript from convivencia Spain to the ruins of Sarajevo, from the Silver Age of Venice to the sunburned rock faces of northern Australia. Find out more.
Readers guide and map now available
You can now download a reading guide and map for People of the Book. Visit the book section here.
You can catch up with Geraldine Brooks at her readings and presentations. Click here for her schedule.
