Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Anthony Shadid

Anthony Shadid is a foreign correspondent covering the Middle East for the Washington Post. He won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, the Overseas Press Club Award, and was the first winner of the Michael Kelly Award.

His 2005 book Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War tells the story of ordinary Iraqis at the time of America's invasion of Iraq.

I recently asked him what he was reading. His reply:
I'm actually tailoring my reading list toward the next book I'm working on, a more personal narrative of rebuilding my family's house in southern Lebanon and their story of emigration to America. In that vein, I've started Joan Didion's Where I Was From. I'm hoping to follow that with Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family.

Along with both those, and more for the prose than anything else, since it's a little off-subject, I'm reading Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick, which I have to say has one of the most remarkable openings I've ever read in a book. The writing is so graceful.
Read more about Night Draws Near and check out Shadid's latest reporting from the Middle East.

--Marshal Zeringue