Neil Graham MacFarquhar is an American writer who is a national correspondent for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''.

Early life and education

MacFarquhar grew up in the 1960s in

Brega Brega , also known as ''Mersa Brega'' or ''Marsa al-Brega'' ( ar, مرسى البريقة , i.e. "Brega Seaport"), is a complex of several smaller towns, industry installations and education establishments situated in Libya on the Gulf of Sidra ...

, a fenced-off expatriate oil compound in Libya. MacFarquhar went to elementary school in Libya. He graduated from

Deerfield Academy Deerfield Academy is an elite coeducational preparatory school in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Founded in 1797, it is one of the oldest secondary schools in the United States. It is a member of the Eight Schools Association, the Ten Schools Admissi ...

and then

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

in international relations in 1982.

Career

After graduation, he returned to the Middle East, became fluent in Arabic, and covered the region for the Associated Press and then as ''

'' bureau chief in Cairo. From June 2008 to the summer of 2013, MacFarquhar was the ''Times''s

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...

bureau chief. From November 2006 to May 2008, he was a national correspondent for the paper, based in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

. He was the Middle East correspondent, based in

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the Capital city, capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, List of ...

, from 2001 until 2006.Advertising supplement (unnamed, but part of the "These times demand the Times" advertising campaign, as noted on the back page of the supplement), in which ''

'' advertises itself in the October 31, 2006 edition of the newspaper, page ZK11 of the 16-page supplement Later, he was the newspaper's Moscow bureau chief. MacFarquhar was a member of the team of reporters from The New York Times who won the 201
Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting
for a series of articles examining how Russia under President Vladimir V. Putin spreads its influence abroad. He is also author of ''The Sand Cafe'', a satirical novel about foreign correspondents mired in a Saudi hotel awaiting the start of the Gulf war and trying to either undermine or seduce each other as the war refuses to get underway. It was partly written during his recuperation from an accident where a runaway bus knocked MacFarquhar off his bicycle on Fifth Avenue in New York City. MacFarquhar's second book, ''The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East,'' is a journal of MacFarquhar's experiences in the region, starting with his childhood in Col.

Gaddafi Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, . Due to the lack of standardization of transcribing written and regionally pronounced Arabic, Gaddafi's name has been romanized in various ways. A 1986 column by ''The Straight Dope'' lists 32 spellin ...

Libya Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Suda ...

, and an assessment of the prospects for political and social change. The book combines aspects of everyday life with the stories of individual men and women working for a freer Middle East.

Bibliography

* ''The Sand Café.'' New York: Public Affairs Books, 2006. * ''The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East.'' New York: Public Affairs Books, 2009.

References

External links

Articles by MacFarquhar
in ''

''
''Neil MacFarquhar''
website.
MacFarquhar discusses "The Sand Cafe"
Authors@Google talks (50 m.), uploaded June 28, 2007.
"Update on Egypt"
Charlie Rose panel with Tarek Masoud
Harvard University
MacFarquhar, and

Anthony Shadid Anthony Shadid (September 26, 1968 – February 16, 2012) was a foreign correspondent for ''The New York Times'' based in Baghdad and Beirut who won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting twice, in 2004 and 2010.PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

, January 31, 2011 (30 m.). {{DEFAULTSORT:Macfarquhar, Neil 1960s births Living people Stanford University alumni American male journalists American war correspondents The New York Times writers Place of birth missing (living people)